Countdown to World Day to Combat Desertification

No revolutionary household toilet social business could exist without customers, and SOIL’s EkoLakay service is no exception. We hold regular marketing events in Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince, Haiti to attract new clients to our EkoLakay household sanitation service. At our next marketing event, on Friday, we’ll be bringing model SOIL EkoLakay toilets to show to people in the Ti Plas Kazo community of Port-au-Prince, and we’ll have lots of SOIL staff on hand to extol the benefits of the EkoLakay service and address any questions about EkoLakay or about ecological sanitation in general.

What’s extra special about this Friday’s event is that it will coincide with the World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD), an event organized by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This global event strives to shed more light on the problems of desertification and land degradation by educating people on the importance of restoring and rehabilitating land in a sustainable manner, focusing on poverty reduction, proper access to water, agriculture, and food security.

For SOIL, it’s natural to celebrate the World Day to Combat Desertification during an EkoLakay marketing event because the EkoLakay service aligns beautifully with the themes of WDCD! EkoLakay is a dry toilet, which means that you don’t need fresh water to use it! Also SOIL collects and transforms the wastes from EkoLakay toilets into a nutrient-rich compost that contributes to the rehabilitation and
productivity of the soil. As SOIL’s toilet business grows, we create more compost to restore Haiti’s soil. It’s a solution that connects urban dwellers who often lack access to improved sanitation with rural farmers who produce Haiti’s food supply.

SOIL’s approach of local leadership and job creation aligns with the bottom-up approach of the UNCCD, which encourages people in developing countries to engage in combating desertification. You can learn more about WDCD here and you can learn more about SOIL’s approach to fighting land degradation in this video about our UNCCD Land for Life Award from 2012.

We are looking forward to celebrating the World Day to Combat Desertification at our EkoLakay marketing event on Friday, and to contributing to a cause that is so intimately connected with our own!