SOIL’s First Agricultural Intern Graduates With a Thesis on SOIL’s EcoSan Compost
We at SOIL are very proud to announce the graduation of Marckindy V. Etienne, SOIL’s first Agricultural Intern, with a degree in Ingénieur Agronome (Agronomy). He earned his degree at Université Chrétienne du Nord d’Haiti in Limbè, Cap-Haitien. Marckindy originally hails from the town of Acul du Nord which is near the north coast of Haiti outside of Cap-Haitien. He is the second youngest of six siblings. Markindy was accepted as an Agricultural Intern at SOIL in order to assist with SOIL’s research on the use of EcoSan...
read moreJune 2013 Newsletter: June News
Dear Friends, First and foremost we want to thank you for helping us to replace the Port-au-Prince Poopmobile. This was our most successful fundraising campaign to date, and we were inspired and humbled by your generosity and belief in our work. The new Poopmobile started making its first rounds last week and even though we haven’t had time to paint it yet, everyone loves it! Because Poopmobile II is bigger than the one it replaced, it has already helped us reduce the overall costs of our operations by enabling us to carry more drums on...
read moreVolunteer Opportunity: Travel Agent Needed!
Are you a travel agent? Or do you know someone who loves SOIL and could help us to keep our costs down by finding good travel deals for us? In exchange for occasional help arranging international travel for SOIL staff presenting at conferences or volunteers coming to Haiti, SOIL will feature your business on our Collaborators page, tell everyone we know about your quality services, and shower you with gratitude. We’d also be happy to host you in Haiti whenever you want to cash in your travel miles to visit the Caribbean! Please email us...
read moreNew Book By SOIL Friend and Collaborator, Beverly Bell
For many years now we’ve had the delightful privilege of running into the indomitable Bev Bell around Haiti, and we have always been impressed by her tireless spirt and her drive to fight for the rights of this beautiful country. We don’t normally use our blog to announce new books that aren’t about compost or sanitation, but Bev Bell’s book, “Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s Divide“, is an exception. Bell’s book takes readers through Haiti’s camps, shantytowns, and rural villages and...
read moreSOIL Celebrates World Environment Day
Yesterday, June 5th, was World Environment Day, and SOIL joined with groups around Haiti in celebrating positive environmental action. In Port-au-Prince, activities focused on bringing the benefits of SOIL’s EcoSan compost back to the EcoSan toilet users. SOIL’s sanitation services are subsidized by the sale of EcoSan compost to other organizations and businesses, agricultural supply stores, and farmers. But we also think it’s important for the users of SOIL toilets to have a chance to benefit from the compost that they help...
read moreFirst Compost Produced from the New Compost Site!
When we first rented land in the northern Haitian community of Mouchinette to build a new composting waste treatment facility a little over a year ago, the only thing on the property was a big mango tree. In the year since, the SOIL team has completely transformed the site into a beautiful, efficient, and highly productive composting facility. Visitors to the Mouchinette site today see that, alongside that original welcoming mango tree, Mouchinette is a flurry of activity, with SOIL team members working hard to empty drums and buckets, turn...
read moreSOIL Celebrates the Arrival of the New Poopmobile
Dear friends, At dawn on Monday morning, Clotes, SOIL’s Poopmobile driver, will be pulling out of the SOIL’s Port-au-Prince office gates in a new Poopmobile to do the biweekly toilet drum pickup in tent camps around the capital. The 5,000 people living in tent cities who currently count on SOIL’s sanitation services to keep their emergency toilets clean and well-functionging will now rest assured that waste collection and treatment will continue, uninterrupted. And all the millions of other errands that the Poopmobile goes on...
read moreSOIL Wins Early Entry Prize in Ashoka Nutrients for All Contest
We recently received notice that we’re one of two early prize winners in Ashoka’s Nutrients for All contest! According to Ashoka, “The challenge is clear: we need innovative solutions that will ensure the availability of nutrients for healthy, natural ecosystems, farms, food, and people.” SOIL’s entry, Closing the Loop, Transforming the Poop, proposes a simple solution to counteract the downward spiral of soil degradation and poverty in Haiti and around the world. In line with Ashoka’s challenge,...
read moreTheo Talks Episode 13: Smoking The Bees
Join SOIL’s charismatic Regional Director Theo Huitema on another adventure in EcoSan. This time Theo visits with the SOIL beekeepers as they begin the harrowing task of transferring the bees from the log that they arrived in to their freshly made hive boxes. Here’s a quote from the video to give you a taste of the excitement you’re in for with this latest Theo Talks episode: “They are putting a machete into the treelog. This is a terrible method! This is more terrible than pulling out your teeth…with his bare...
read moreReplace 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 moreGood Compost and Beautiful Gardens Make Good Neighbors!
Last Tuesday, we had a visit from our neighbors–all 14 of them. They wanted to know who we were, what we did, and why we were doing it. Our inquisitive neighbors were from nearby Harmony House orphanage and they ranged in age from 7 to 17 years of age. They quickly declared that they were particularly fond of our compost. They told us of their previously unsuccessful efforts to transform food scrap into composts. So when we told them of our success with transforming human waste into compost, they were all ears! What more, it was a field...
read moreLet Sleeping Cows Lie: SOIL Executive Director Mauled by Cow
As many of you know SOIL’s dear Executive Director Sasha Kramer loves animals. Unfortunately, while attempting to wake up Uit the cow for a late night snack of a hot, salty potato, Sasha became tangled in Uit’s lead rope and was dragged across the field at the SOIL farm in Limonade. Sasha has thankfully since recovered, but she may reconsider the timing for giving hot, salty potato snacks to cows. We hope that you enjoy the reenactment photos below and remember to let sleeping cows lie.
read moreThe SOIL and The Forest
On June 4th 2013, members of the SOIL agricultural teams from Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien will travel to Sadhana Forest, a remote ecovillage on the southeastern border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Located in what is known as the ‘boukara‘, or desert, of Anse-à-Pitre, Haiti, Sadhana Forest is a ecological restoration project that focuses on creating long-term food security for the area of Anse-à-Pitre. SOIL and Sadhana Forest will collaborate to host an intensive two weeks immersion course on permaculture or what is...
read moreMay 2013 Newsletter: A Sustainable Sanitation Revolution
Dear Friends, Day after day our agronomists bring in epic harvests of spinach, beets, sorghum, yams, and other vegetables, and people are starting to take note of the positive impact that EcoSan compost has on production yields. On the compost supply side, our hearts are rich with stories from SOIL toilet users who like their toilets and the demand for EcoSan toilets around Haiti is so strong that we can’t keep up with all the requests. This month, instead of sending you a long letter, we wanted to give you a chance to check out some of...
read morePermaculture Magazine: Recycling Human Waste to Improve Sanitation and Produce Food
By Mark Sanders in Permaculture Magazine on Wednesday, 8th May 2013. Haiti is often seen as having the worst sanitation and clean water access in the Western hemisphere. But with the help of SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods), waste resources are being transformed into compost, sanitation is improving and local food production is being revived. Mark Sanders, a civil engineer explains his research visit to the SOIL project in Haiti. As the global use of inorganic mined fertilisers increases, so do the resulting environmental...
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 moreTheatre Group Promotes SOIL EcoSan Toilets in Haiti
In order to reach people who would most benefit from ecological sanitation, such as those in Cap-Haitien’s crowded slums without modern plumbing or electricity, SOIL is using innovative methods to break down cultural barriers towards ecological sanitation. SOIL has been collaborating with a small theatre group to develop a 20-minute sketch promoting the EcoSan toilets SOIL has been providing and maintaining over the years. Here is recap of the story, for entertainment, and for a better understanding of common obstacles SOIL has overcome over...
read moreGrowing Shade for Trutier
As frequent readers of the SOIL blog will know, our composting waste treatment site in Port-au-Prince is housed within the boundaries of the municipal dump, Trutier. The Trutier dump site has long been one of the city’s most degraded and harsh environments, thereby making it an exemplary location to showcase SOIL’s land rehabilitation capabilities. The Trutier site is managed by SMCRS (the government solid waste management department) and a company called SOTEK has recently been contracted to conduct a debris recycling project....
read moreTheo Talks Episode 12: Making UD Toilet Seats
Join SOIL’s charismatic Regional Director Theo Huitema on another adventure in EcoSan. This time Theo shows how SOIL’s new vacuformer tool enables the SOIL team to make low-cost urine diversion (UD) seats. Now every part of SOIL’s EcoSan toilets are made or purchased locally. Learn more about the vacufomer here (made from a vacuum cleaner, a stove top burner and a roll of aluminum foil) and watch the rest of the Theo Talk series here. Enjoy watching! Check out the entire Theo Talks series...
read moreTransforming Wastes Into Resources: Global Edition!
We are a population of over seven billion people, living in a world with increasingly scarce resources. Looking forward, there is one resource – often overlooked – that is perpetually available: human waste. The moniker ‘waste’ is indicative of general global perceptions: feces are to be discarded, and nothing more. For nearly seven years SOIL has endeavored to transform wastes into resources in Haiti, both through the physical transformation of human waste into rich, organic compost, and by de-stigmatizing waste within...
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