EkoLakay reaches the 1000th Toilet Milestone!
Fabienne with EkoLakay’s 1000th client! The paper crowns say “EkoLakay: Sit on your throne!”
Today is a day of celebration for SOIL – we just installed our 1,000th EkoLakay household toilet!
EkoLakay would not exist without our clients, who pay for the service every month and in doing so, prove that ecological sanitation is a working alternative to other sanitation options like flush toilets or pit latrines. We want to thank each and every one of them. We are also so thankful for all of our friends and supporters, whose contributions subsidize the waste treatment component of the EkoLakay program.
Our 1,000th client’s name is Jean Nelson Arnoux. He lives in Port-au-Prince in a quiet neighborhood tucked behind a church and a school. Jean has a disability that prevents him from walking, and he said that this was one of the reasons that he chose to get an EkoLakay toilet. Like a chamber pot, EkoLakay can be installed right in someone’s bedroom! But with EkoLakay, one of our team members will pass by each house once a week to take the full container of waste and give a clean container containing more cover material, making maintenance easier for clients
Jean Nelson’s neighbors check out an EkoLakay toilet just before it’s installed
EkoLakay is a convenient sanitation option for people with physical disabilities, people who don’t have a private toilet in their home, folks in areas with a high water table or lack of infrastructure, or people who want to ensure that their waste is transformed and reused in a safe, dignified, and ecologically beneficial way. There is a huge demand for sanitation services in Haiti, and SOIL is planning on how to scale up to meet this need with tens of thousands of EkoLakay toilets in the coming years
The neighbors got curious about the celebration for Jean Nelson, and one named Meticien Junior ended up installing an EkoLakay in his house after seeing the set up. Jean proudly declared his status to passersby, “That’s me- the 1,000th client!” Junior matched his bravado with “and me, the 1,001st client!”
SOIL is pretty pleased with our household toilet program’s growth rate since July 2012, and we’re gearing up for exponential growth in the coming years
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