Sant Teknoloji: Brase Lide

(The Brainstorming Technology Center)

A project of Haiti Outreach: Pwoje Espwa (H.O.P.E.) and partner of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL).  Borgne, Haiti

 

Inspiring community participation and creativity in solving environmental health problems…

HISTORY

The Haiti Outreach Pwoje Espwa (H.O.P.E.) Health Clinic in Borgne, Haiti was established in 1996. (See www.hopehaiti.com for more information on H.O.P.E.). Based on clinic records, it became clear that waterborne illnesses, especially typhoid and intestinal parasites, were a major cause of disease in the community.   More than 1700 patients a year (1/4 of all patients) come to the clinic suffering from these preventable waterborne illnesses. Additionally, water tests completed in 2003 revealed that most drinking water sources in the area are contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria. The presence of fecal coliform bacteria is considered an indication that pathogenic organisms may also be present in the water.

Attacking Waterborne Illness at the Source

In June 2003, H.O.P.E. inaugurated the Sant Teknoloji: Brase Lide, an “idea exchange” environmental technology center, as a pilot project. The overall goals of the center are to inspire local confidence and creativity in environmental problem solving and to provide outreach services including educational programs and technology implementation projects to the Commune of Borgne, Haiti. The Sant is currently focusing on preventing waterborne illnesses.

VISION

The Sant is designed to be a place for exchanging and experimenting with ideas…well-known local ideas, new inventions, ideas brought by visitors, and ideas from around the world. To this end, the Sant will:

v     Assess community needs and priorities related to environmental health.

v     Provide educational materials on community-identified priorities.

v     Demonstrate and test prototypes of simple technologies designed to promote health.

v     Conduct tests of environmental conditions and publicize the results.

v     Inspire community participation, confidence, and creativity in solving environmental problems through technology design seminars, workshops, and small grants to develop new ideas.

v     Provide training, information, and resources to build simple technologies that have been accepted by the community. 

v     Provide follow-up support for operation and maintenance of promoted technologies.

v     Offer traveling seminars on environmental health for schools or rural community meetings (upon request).

v     Provide water testing and surveying services for community development projects.

v     Utilize local radio stations and print media to promote environmental health.

v     Work with schools, Scouts, youth groups, women’s groups, health agents, development groups, peasant organizations, and other community groups to promote environmental health.

v     Collaborate with university students for background research, ideas, testing of local designs/methods, and implementation studies.

 SANT ACTIVITIES

Sant Teknoloji Drop-In Hours

Community Half Day Seminars

Two-week Sanitation Workshop

Radio Programming

Prototype Demonstrations

            Sanitation:  Dry Toilets and Arborloos

            Water Treatment: SODIS, UV disinfection, Gift of Water

            Other Technologies: Solar Cooking, food drying

Pilot Implementation Projects

Community Services: Water Testing and Surveying

Special Events

Sant Teknoloji Drop In Hours

The Sant is located on the southwest corner of the market in Borgne and is open during the main market days for high visibility, Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 9am to 2pm. Visitors are welcome to drop in to learn about new technologies, experience first-hand how the technologies work, brainstorm ideas for their own community’s development, use the dry toilet, get a drink of safe drinking water from the UV system, treat a bucket of water to take home, get water test results, or just sit and chat. Sometimes lucky visitors also get to try some solar cooking. 

Community Seminars

Upon request, the Sant staff and volunteers hold half day seminars, often walking up to 12 hours to reach rural locations. During the first year (summer ’03 – summer ’04), the Sant held 26 workshops reaching over 2,200 people.

Discussion topics include: types of waterborne illnesses and their effect on the community, how the illnesses are spread, hygiene, good and bad microbes, ecological sanitation, composting, simple drinking water treatment methods (SODIS, boiling, chlorine, solar cooking), UV disinfection, water testing, and community resources that are available at the Sant Teknoloji in Borgne.  Seminars often end in discussions of how the community group can start their own water or sanitation projects.

Two Week Sanitation Workshop

During the summer of 2004, the Sant staff, with assistance of two UC Berkeley environmental engineering graduate students, held a special two-week seminar for community leaders interested in looking in depth at local sanitation realities and options. Peasant organizations, teachers groups, and the Scouts were represented.

 

The seminar began with background discussions and experiments on the science of sanitation (water cycles, pathogens, infiltration, nutrient cycles, and existing problems). We then brainstormed our own “Sanitation Guide” to help us evaluate possible options for Borgne. After learning about the many different types of toilets used around the world and how they operate, we began to evaluate the options. We discussed the ability of each toilet type to destroy or safely store pathogens and its impact on both human health and the natural environment. We then chose our top three choices to evaluate using our “Sanitation Guide”. We determined together that latrines and arborloos are appropriate for rural areas with low water tables, but that for the low lying areas and communities near wells or springs, dry toilets would be the best option. Based on the decisions of the workshop participants, we decided to install three pilot dry toilets around Bornge in the spring of 2006.

Radio Programming

Sant staff and volunteers hold a weekly radio program on Venus FM, a local radio station in Borgne. They regularly invite guests including medical personal from the hospital and the H.O.P.E. clinic as well as local political leaders, agronomists, and educators to discuss issues related to health and the environment.

 

Prototype Demonstration

One of the main goals of the Sant is to provide the community with hands-on experience with new technologies and ideas. A variety of technologies are on display and visitors are welcomed to explore new ideas with the Sant staff and volunteers. Tours are also held for students from local schools.

Ecological Sanitation – Dry Toilets

When the Sant opened in 2003, it opened with the first dry toilet (that we know of) in Haiti. The dry toilet incorporates a seat that separates urine and feces and does not use water. The feces are covered with ash, dirt, or lime after each use. Any pathogens present in the feces are destroyed by drying, high pH, and at least a year of storage time. The urine is collected in a separate bucket and can be diluted 3:1 with water and used as a liquid fertilizer. When dry, the feces can be added to compost. With a dry toilet, no resources/nutrients are lost and local farmers do not need to purchase chemical fertilizers. Our dry toilet is made simply from a separating seat and two buckets (see photo). See also our section on ecological sanitation for more details.

This year we have begun manufacturing separating toilet seats made out of concrete using a mold purchased from Centro de Innovacion en Tecnologia Alternativa A.C. (CITA) in Cuernavaca, Mexico We are currently building three public pilot dry toilets in communities around Borgne at the request of organized peasant groups and neighborhood associations who have agreed to participate in the construction, operations, and maintenance of the toilets in their communities. If these dry toilets are well accepted, we plan to continue with larger scale implementation projects for the schools. Separating seats are also available for individual purchase.

Ecological Sanitation—Arborloos

Sasha Kramer, a doctoral student at Stanford and founder of SOIL, taught us how to build arborloos based on the work of Peter Morgan that she observed in Zimbabwe (http://aquamor.tripod.com/). An arborloo is a shallow pit (1 meter) covered with a domed concrete cover. The cover has foot rests and a hole for squatting. The user pours a bucket of dirt or ash into the toilet after each use. Kitchen scraps and other compost materials can also be added. When the pit is full, the cover is removed and place over a fresh pit. The original pit is topped with soil and a tree is planted in it which will utilize the rich nutrients of the urine and feces in the pit. Arborloos are the simplest and cheapest toilet options available. They can not be used safely in all locations (especially near water sources), but are a huge improvement over open defecation on the beaches and riverbanks. We installed our first arborloo for the Kindergarden at the National School of Fond LaGrange. The smaller version of the arborloo made for children is called a “kiddieloo”. We are planning to install a series of arborloos in areas that are currently used for open defecation as a first step toward improving the sanitation situation.

Water Treatment—Solar DISinfection (SODIS)

Xanat Flores, doctoral student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology brought the idea of SODIS, a simple water disinfection technique requiring only a plastic soda bottle and sunlight, to Borgne in June 2003. Teaching SODIS to people with very little expendable income for water treatment has become an important task of the Sant, since water can be treated by SODIS for free! In depth information on SODIS is available at: www.sodis.ch.

Basic instructions:

1. Fill bottle ¾ full with water to be treated.
2. Cap the bottle and shake it to introduce oxygen into the water.
3. Fill the bottle the rest of the way and replace the cap.
4. Optional: Paint half of the bottle black, the long way.
5. Place the bottle on its side on a reflective surface such a metal roof or a piece of metal sheeting (or directly on the ground)
6. Leave the bottle in direct sunlight for 1 day if the sky is clear or for 2 days if it is cloudy.

Water Treatment—The Ferro-cement UV-Tube

Low-pressure UV radiation from germicidal lamps is very effective at inactivating most pathogenic bacteria, protozoa, and virus found in drinking water. The UV-Tube is a simple ultraviolet (UV) water disinfection system invented at the University of California at Berkeley that can be built from materials and hand tools available in developing countries for around $50. More than one UV-Tube design is possible and different materials are available in different countries. We chose to work with the ferro-cement design in Borgne. The UV-Tube shown below was built in July 2004 and is able to treat drinking water at 5 liters/minute. More information on the UV-Tube is available at http://rael.berkeley.edu/uvtube/uvtubeproject.htm. Treated drinking water is available at the Tech Center whenever it is open. People shopping in the market often stop by for a safe drink of water, and some bring buckets of water to treat and carry home.

Water Treatment—Gift of Water

Although it is not currently operating in Borgne, the Gift of Water program is very popular in our area of Haiti. We do, however, have one example of their filters at the Tech Center so that we can teach people about it and offer support on its use. The filter consists of two buckets, one placed on top of the other. The top bucket contains a yarn filter and chlorine drops are added to the water for disinfection. Afer 30 minutes, the top bucket is placed on the bottom bucket. The bottom bucket contains a charcoal filter to remove the chlorine residual. We are considering fundraising to bring the Gift of Water program to Borgne.

Other Technologies—Solar Cooking and Food Drying

Each day the Sant is open, the staff cooks a meal for themselves and the volunteers using a solar panel cooker from Solar Cookers International. This simple cooker can be made from cardboard, foil, white glue, and a heat resistant bag. The staff and volunteers have dined on Haitian favorites such as “bouyon”, a beef and dumpling soup, “legoum”, a crayfish, greens, and cabbage dish, and hardboiled eggs. The solar cooker can also be used for pasteurizing water. We also recently were given a food dryer. We hope to experiment with drying mangoes and breadfruit as well as other produce items that are abundant at certain times of the year but currently can not be stored out of season.

Pilot Implementation Projects

We are currently building three pilot dry toilets in the Commune of Borgne. Each toilet is built at the request and with the participation of community groups. We provide the purchased materials and skilled labor while they provide sand and gravel carried from the river and help building the dry toilet. Aside from the three toilets that are planned, we have requests from two churches and a peasant organization to build dry toilets in their neighborhoods also.

Community Services—Water testing and surveying.

The Sant provides water testing services using Hach Pathoscreen Pillows in 20 mL of water to test for hydrogen sulfide producing organisms which may indicate fecal contamination. Nearly all water sources that we have tested are positive using this test, but water treated by SODIS, UV, or chlorine gives negative test results. We have also recently acquired a level and rod for surveying, and we have begun training the Sant volunteers to use the level to record the elevations of water sources.

 

 

 

Special Events

The Sant Teknoloji Brase Lide annual soccer tournament for girls was an educational idea that came directly from the Sant staff, providing them an opportunity to reach new people. Before the game and during half-time, the Sant staff uses the microphone to talk about waterborne illness prevention and water source protection and to invite people to visit the Sant Teknoloji.

FUTURE GOALS

v     Purchasing a solar powered freezer to provide treated ice to the community.

v     Renting a garden for five years where we can experiment using urine from our dry toilet as a fertilizer and demonstrate composting.

v     Hiring a local artist to produce improved community education materials and getting the materials reproduced and laminated for durability.

v     Continuing the weekly radio program (cost of broadcasting is about $20/month).

v     Renting a larger space or (ideally) building a new building in partnership with the Scouts, the teacher’s organization, and other local groups. Our current room is small and prone to flooding. We are looking for a larger space for demonstrating water disinfection and sanitation prototypes and holding seminars with roof access (for solar panels and solar demonstration projects).

v     Supporting the staff’s creative ideas for continued community education programs (for example the well attended “H.O.P.E. Sante-Plus” Soccer Tournament held December 2004)

v     Hiring and training eight new part-time extension workers to promote waterborne illness prevention education in each of the 7 sections of the Commune of Borgne and the town of TiBouk (the region’s market center).

v     Planning and community organizing for larger scale dry toilet implementation projects, ideally providing adequate ecological sanitation for all schools in the Commune of Borgne.