National Geographic Photo Camp comes to Cite Soleil
Friday was clear and hot, as 18 young Haitians from around Port au Prince piled out of vans onto the concrete soccer field in Pax Christi, site of the collaborative EcoSan and garden projects of SOIL and Bochika. The students were selected from their communities to participate in the week-long program, learning about cameras and shooting techniques. Every day they visited different sites and learned to capture images, from which they produced their own photo book at the end. National Geographic staff led them to the composting toilets where...
read moreHoly Crap! (the film)… now on YouTube!
Have you seen this wonderful little (5 minute) film about SOIL yet?
read moreSOIL’s EcoSan Toilet Design Goes Global
Last year, Daniel Tillias, the director of our dear partner organization, Pax Christi Ayiti, said “It is my vision that Haiti will have too many SOIL toilets producing fertilizer and we’ll have to start exporting them to the Dominican Republic and to all the other countries of the world”. Today we’re proud to announce that Daniel’s vision is starting to come true as the latest edition of Hesperian‘s “Where There Is No Doctor” manual features SOIL and our new composting toilet model. “Where...
read more6,000 Citrus Trees! – Jam Cruise passengers help launch SOIL’s new tree nursery in northern Haiti
Reposted from Trees, Water & People’s blog at treeswaterpeople.wordpress.com. by Sebastian Africano, International Director, Trees, Water & People With support from Haitian non-profit Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (S.O.I.L.) and Trees, Water & People (TWP), Positive Legacy and Jam Cruise passengers led the charge in seeding 6,000 citrus trees, thus launching a 10,000 seedling nursery at SOIL’s rural compost site in Limonade, Haiti. Positive Legacy and Trees, Water & People have partnered to offset Jam...
read moreSeeking a highly qualified engineer with a passion for innovative sanitation interventions…
SOIL is pleased to announce a job opening in Port au Prince, Haiti for a WASH engineer. We are seeking a highly qualified engineer with a passion for innovative sanitation interventions and a willingness to commit to a minimum 6 month position in Port au Prince. Though SOIL cannot offer the same salaries and benefits as our larger counterparts, we can promise an inspiring experience and the chance to closely interact with the communities we serve without the security restrictions common to other organizations. See full job posting on...
read moreHaiti Rising From the Ashes by Sasha Kramer
Remembering January 12, 2010 Download (PDF, 1.14MB)
read moreAl Jazeera: The world can’t afford to keep wasting soil
By Stan Cox, in Al Jazeera on January 12, 2012. One-third of Earth’s soil is degraded because of unsustainable farming methods, which could lead to a major food crisis. Salina, Kansas – Late last year, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released a hair-raising report on the state of the world’s soil and water resources. The bottomline: 25 per cent of the world’s food-producing soils are highly degraded or are rapidly being degraded. Add to that other soils which they say are degrading...
read moreInvitation: Come out to the Tap Tap Garden opening celebration in Cite Soleil on January 22nd!
Bochika, SAKALA-Pax Christi Ayiti, and SOIL invite you to celebrate a positive milestone of progress and possibility in Haiti: the opening of the Jaden Tap Tap (Tap Tap Garden) and a SOIL EcoSan Toilet in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince on January 22. The celebration begins at 10 am and will include a performance by the internationally-recognized Haitian musician BelO, agricultural demonstrations, youth presentations and performances, and the inauguration of a new community Eco-San toilet. The Jaden Tap Tap is an acre of former landfill that now...
read moreNational Geographic Video: Putting Waste To Work by SOIL’s Sasha Kramer
SOIL’s Executive Director, Dr. Sasha Kramer, gives a talk at National Geographic on fighting Haiti’s most pressing health, economic and environmental problems, one toilet at a time. This follows up a previous article in the National Geographic in October on SOIL’s attempt to use human waste to revive farmland and the nomination of Sasha as a 2011 National Geographic “Emerging Explorer”....
read moreFairfield Citizen: Guest column / After 4 years in Haiti, a plea to help island nation by Jess Lozier
By Jess Lozier, in the Fairfield Citizen, December 20, 2011 I recently returned home to Fairfield from Haiti, capping off four years of living and working in Cap-Haitien and in Port-au-Prince. I start medical school in January, and I know it will be several years before I will be able to return to the Caribbean island nation that had been my home for so long. I struggled to say goodbye to a place that has shaped everything about me, from my love of rice and beans and voodoo-drum beats to my desire to pursue a career in international...
read moreSupport SOIL by Gifting EcoSan Calendars and Greeting Cards
The 2012 SOIL calendar follows the EcoSan cycle, featuring gorgeous photos of the elements of EcoSan – people, toilets, compost and agriculture. As in the past, we kindly ask our friends and supporters purchase a pack of ten calendars at a discounted rate of $150 for ten, and then resell or give them to friends and family. This greatly reduces our shipping costs, thereby increasing the funds raised via calendar sales. The calendars are $20 each when purchased individually and we believe they are well worth the cost. We also have...
read moreSan Francisco joins the composting toilet revolution!
SOIL was co-founded in 2006 in San Francisco California. We are so pleased to see that our dream has come full circle with San Francisco now considering putting in a network of public composting toilets throughout the city to help solve the sewage and water problems faced by large cities around the world. A recent film about SOIL called Holy Crap ends with one of our favorite Haitian collaborators, Daniel Tillias of Pax Christi Haiti, saying “with this composting toilet program, Haiti will once again be an example to the world, just...
read moreHelp Wanted: Program Manager for Cap-Haitien
SOIL is pleased to announce a job opening in Cap-Haitien for a Program Manager. We are seeking a highly motivated and organized individual who can help coordinate and report on expanding projects in Cap-Haitien. It is an exciting time to be part of the team as SOIL’s gears up to pilot a household sanitation system for urban areas and expand our rural composting site. We are seeking applicants with the following experience and skills: Experience with accounting, financial reporting, project reporting and...
read moreSAKALA Field trip to Compost Site
Last Sunday 12 young women from Cite Soleil visited the SOIL compost site in Pernier. The young women were from a local organization called SAKALA (supported by Pax Christi Haiti) which works on community development and conflict prevention in Cite Soleil. SOIL has been working with SAKALA for the past 2 years on ecological sanitation and we currently have 20 toilets in the Cite Lumiere neighborhood of Cite Soleil where SAKALA is active. SAKALA has recently started an amazing community garden called Tap Tap Garden with the...
read moreSOIL’s Winter Newsletter Is Here
Email us at info@oursoil.org to get future editions straight into your inbox and then check out all the latest happenings here: Ecological Sanitation Catches on in Haiti, Winter 2011.
read moreHousehold Sanitation Survey Almost Complete
In one of the urban neighborhoods hardest hit by cholera, Shada, Cap-Haitien, SOIL community workers have been going door-to-door to find out why. Over the past four weeks, SOIL has spoken with the residents of over 2,500 households about their access to sanitation and their family’s hygiene practices. The data gathered will paint an important picture of the sanitation realities of urban communities in Haiti and will help SOIL design a better pilot program to bring household EcoSan toilets to this neighborhood, and then hopefully...
read moreSOIL’s 2012 calendar available soon!
SOIL’s 2012 calendar is at the printer! It was designed by the amazing Mimi Jorling, a friend and volunteer of SOIL, who lives in New York City but also volunteers for a local organization in Cabaret, just outside Port-au-Prince. The 2012 calendar follows the EcoSan cycle, featuring gorgeous photos of the elements of EcoSan- people, toilets, compost and agriculture. This year we chose to print the calendars on high post-consumer content 100% recycled paper using only low-impact soy and vegetable based inks. The calendars were printed by...
read moreSmart Planet: Safe sanitation systems close the loop on poop by Mary Catherine O’Connor
By Mary Catherine O’Connor in Smart Planet, November 19, 2011 Today is the 10th annual World Toilet Day. Sponsored by the Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, the event is meant to build awareness about the risks that lack of sanitation present to the physical, emotional and psychological health of 2.6 billion people around the world. Fortunately, poor sanitation is receiving an increasing amount of attention from NGOs, academics and other problem-solvers around the world. But there’s time to waste, since lack of hygiene...
read moreSOIL has its sixth, last and most fruitful EcoSan Training of 2011!
On Thursday, November 10th, twenty-four enthusiastic individuals representing local, national and international organizations came together in Port-au-Prince to learn ecological sanitation principles and best practices in a day-long training lead by SOIL staff. This year SOIL began a series of training sessions to introduce other NGOs and individuals to ecological sanitation technology whereby human waste is collected and composted for use in agriculture and reforestation efforts across Haiti. The response was overwhelming with nearly every...
read moreSOIL’s Poopmobile Gets a Paint Job!
Several times a week SOIL driver Clotes Alexandre starts up the large flatbed truck parked outside the front door of the office and rumbles out into the streets of Port-au-Prince. With the help of SOIL’s Drum Collection Team, Davidson Ulysses and Herby Sanon, Clotes works his way through urban neighborhoods and tent cities, collecting the 15 gallon drums used in SOIL’s ecological toilets and driving them out to a SOIL composting site where the drums are then dumped and cleaned and readied for redistribution on the next trip. Thanks...
read more
