April 2014 Newsletter: Carnival, Social Entrepreneurship, and Permaculture
Dear friends,
Welcome to the long-awaited springtime! There are a lot of exciting things happening at SOIL this spring and we hope you take a few minutes to check out the most recent highlights below. ‘
Also, a huge thank you to everyone who contributed during the first two days of our Spring Challenge. Please help us reach our goal of expanding SOIL’s sanitation service, doubling our waste treatment operation, testing SOIL compost on four new crops, and teaching 500 more practitioners about how to replicate SOIL’s successes in their own communities. It’s an ambitious goal, but we believe we can do it with your support!
With love from Haiti,
SOIL
April Updates
 | An Innovative Marketing Plan – Carnival-StyleFor this year’s Carnaval Des Etudiants in Cap-Haitien, a lcoal theatre troupe dressed up in red and blue costumes, donned face-paint and glitter, and took to the streets with baskets of fresh produce, samples of SOIL compost, and a model SOIL EcoSan toilet. Check out the fun! |
 | SOIL Toilets on the MoveBusiness is booming for SOIL’s new mobile toilet enterprise! The mobile toilets, which are donated port-a-potties that our sanitation team has retrofitted with SOIL’s simple EcoSan technology, are our newest income-generating project. Along with our household toilet pilot business, compost sales, and marketing crops from our research farms, profits from mobile toilet rentals provide valuable revenue to support our free public toilets as well as other SOIL projects. |
 | SOIL Honored by a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year AwardWe’re very pleased to announce that SOIL’s Executive Director and Co-Founder, Dr. Sasha Kramer, has been named a 2014 Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year in recognition of her groundbreaking work developing new social business models for the ecological and financially sustainable provision of sanitation services in some of the world’s most impoverished communities. |
 | California Dreaming: SOIL Agonomist Heads to Sustainable Farming TrainingWe are pleased to announce that our Cap-Haitien Agricultural Director, Romel Toussaint, has been awarded a scholarship to attend a six-month training with Ecology Action in California. Romel will be missed this summer, but we’re looking forward to digging into expansions of our experimental farm as soon as he gets back! |
 | From New York to Port-au-Prince: Environmental Engineering Students Visit SOILIn March, a group of five inspired environmental engineering students from the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) at the State University of New York visited SOIL’s operations in Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince. Read more about their eventful visit touring SOIL’s sustainable development projects on the SOIL blog. |
 | World Economic Forum Blog: Why Social Entrepreneurs See the Opportunity in WasteGone are the days of sanitation languishing in the shadows while other basic human needs take the spotlight. In the past decade, the topic of sanitation has emerged from backroom discussions among engineers at water conferences to a high-level, global dialogue among activists, celebrities and philanthropists. Read more of Sasha’s post from the World Economic Forum blog here. |
Join us:Join us on Facebook and Twitter and tell all your friends about us too! Donate now:To help SOIL meet the increasing demand for ecological sanitation in Haiti, our friends at 11th Hour Project have pledged to match all donations to SOIL dollar for dollar between April 10th – May 10th, up to our goal of $75,000. Double the impact of your donation by contributing today! |
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