All Together to Make it Happen

Nadege Fucien is a mother and an entrepreneur. She is raising her growing family alongside Haiti’s northern coast in a neighborhood of Cap-Haïtien called Avyasyon. Like many of her neighbors, Nadege joined SOIL’s sanitation service, EkoLakay, to have a safe, clean place for her family to go to the bathroom. During our weekly EkoLakay collection run last week, our team took a break to sit and chat together to get to know her a little more.

Meet Nadege

One of the reasons that Nadege decided first to sign up to have a SOIL toilet in her home was the affordability of the service. Compared to other available sanitation solutions, SOIL’s was much more affordable and it didn’t require Nadege and her partner to pay an expensive upfront cost for installation or construction.

Six years later, why is she committed to staying on the service? Nadege sees first-hand what a lack of citywide sanitation access has on her community. She told us that especially after heavy rains, which seem to fall every night these days, untreated waste moves through her neighborhood. When this happens, it often enters through the gate into her home and endangers the health of her family. This is a part of why she tries to recruit as many of her neighbors as she can to join SOIL’s service. Ending the spread of waterborne disease will require safe sanitation for each and every family.

A VIP for a Safer Future for All

Nadege calls herself a SOIL VIP because she works hard to respect good hygiene practices with her EkoLakay toilet and she is driven to set aside a small piece of the income she makes as a merchant to pay the EkoLakay user fee on time each month. She explained to us that she hopes this will help SOIL reach more of her neighbors with the service.

Looking to the future, Nadege shared that she dreams of a Haiti where communities are cleaner for everybody and where life is more affordable for families like hers who struggle to afford even the basic necessities. “We’re the ones to change it” she told us. “Tèt ansanm pou ede sa fèt.” “All together to make it work.”

Alongside the communities we serve, SOIL is working to change the story and we won’t stop fighting until all families in Haiti have access to lifesaving, affordable sanitation. All together!

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