Replace the Poopmobile!
Our beloved Poopmobile has died after 3 years of transporting drums from the Port-au-Prince tent camps to the SOIL compost site, and we are not able to fix it. We have spent the last 2 weeks using our 2 pickups to transport 300 drums per week, but this means we have had to suspend other operations and it is taking a real toll on the pickups, which are not built for such heavy loads. We desperately need to buy a new truck, but the $35,000 price tag is outside of our current budget. More than 5,000 people living in tent cities around...
read moreSOIL To Help Host a Permaculture Design Certificate Course in June
This June, SOIL staff will be collaborating with the people at Sadhana Forest in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti to offer a Permaculture Design Certificate Course in Haitian Creole. SOIL’s new Sustainability and Capacity Development Consultant, Jean Arnaud, will be leading the two week course that will cover a wide range of topics such as organic food production, ecological pest management, erosion control, drought proofing, energy conservation, and eco-friendly housing design. Participants for this sold-out class will earn a Permaculture...
read moreEmergency Flood Relief
SOIL kindly asks for your support to provide emergency relief to the community of Shada, Cap-Haitien where spring rains have brought devastating floods. We don’t currently have the discretionary funds in our budget to meet the critical needs of this community, and we ask you to please consider making a contribution today to help us purchase aquatabs (to purify drinking water), soap, bleach, emergency food supplies, and plastic boots for residents working on the relief effort. Fundraising Goal: $2,000 Deadline: April 20, 2013 Until we...
read moreCompost Comin’ Up!
SOIL has reached another “turning point” in our composting career! The construction of our three new glasiers (a drying station for the final states of compost production) at our composting site in Mochinette was finished last week, just in time for the emptying of compost bin #1! After three rather “shitty” months cooped up in a poop pen, the poop has been scooped and is ready now for an exciting three more – this time spread out and relaxing on our lovely new glasiers, drying up those winter sorrows and preparing for a fruitful...
read moreDecember 2012 Newsletter: Happy Holidays from SOIL
Dear Friends, The holidays are almost upon us, and the SOIL offices in both Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien are buzzing with excitement. Last week in Shada, Cap-Haitien, we officially launched the household toilet project with the installation of 143 household toilets. In Port-au-Prince we have sold over 700 bags of compost, our first big sale ever!!! We hope you will take a moment to catch up on some of the SOIL news below – a lot has happened over the past month! – and that you will be inspired to make a holiday contribution. We...
read morePress Release: SOIL Selected As a Grand Challenges Canada Rising Star in Public Health
SOIL is honored to announce that we were selected as a recipient of the Grand Challenges Canada Rising Stars in Global Health Award. SOIL’s innovative new program to develop and implement a social business model for household sanitation services in Haiti is being recognized alongside 68 other “Stars in Global Health” from around the world. Recipients were selected for bold, out-of-the-box ideas to tackle debilitating disease and and save lives in the Developing World. As a result of this award, SOIL will receive a $100,000 to...
read moreBioCycle: Building Sustainable Sanitation Systems
By Rich Flammer in BioCycle, November 2012, Vol. 53, No. 11, p. 34 A low cost system of resource management such as composting toilets is helping to mitigate many of Haiti’s social and ecological challenges. The Caribbean Republic of Haiti — the poorest, most environmentally degraded country in the Western Hemisphere with a population of about 10 million — is a case study in forestry and soil fertility mismanagement. A colonial plantation system, monocropping to produce exports such as tobacco, cotton and coffee, harvesting timber...
read moreLe Nouvelliste: Cap-Haïtien à l’heure de l’assainissement
By Dumas Maçon in Le Nouvelliste, November 16, 2012 Surpopulation, insalubrité et territoire sauvagement habité, plusieurs quartiers de la ville du Cap-Haïtien offrent le lugubre spectacle d’une région en déliquescence. Les bidonvilles pullulent et les populations habitant les ravines fourmillent. Plusieurs centaines de milliers d’habitants grouillent dans un espace aménagé pour 50 000. Ici, l’ONG SOIL a décidé d’inverser la tendance par un ambitieux projet de protection des ressources du sol, d’autonomisation...
read moreNovember 2012 Newsletter: 10,000 Trees for Haiti
Dear friends and supporters, We would like to start by thanking those of you who contributed to SOIL over the past month. We had a record breaking number of individuals who responded to our calls for support and as a result our toilets remained open and all of our hardworking staff have been paid. We will still need your ongoing support in the future, but your generous donations have allowed us a little breathing room to get down to the real business of providing dignified and sustainable sanitation. Our work was put to the test this last...
read more10,000 Trees for Haiti
In January 2012, SOIL partnered with Trees, Water & People, Positive Legacy, and Jam Cruise passengers to plant thousands of fruit trees in northern Haiti using SOIL’s EcoSan compost (human manure, aka “humanure”). These citrus trees have matured and are now being planted. But, local community organizations and farmers’ cooperatives have asked us to do even more to help make the mountainsides of Haiti green with trees again. We envision planting 10,000 more seedlings, hosting tree-planting days, and creating an...
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