36 results for author: Shannon Smith
Building an International Commode for Peace
This month I had the joyful experience of participating in a program called Southwest Studies with six students from Syria, Austria, Canada, Italy, Barbados and the U.S. at my alma mater, United World College. United World College (UWC) is a two-year international boarding school that has locations around the globe. Their mission is to make education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. Ben Gillock, the school’s Environmental Systems and Societies teacher and the founder of the UWC Agroecology Research Center, invited me to join his Southwest Studies to share SOIL’s philosophy, values, and EcoSan ...
Food Security through Urban Gardens
You may have seen some photos around our social media sites recently highlighting our urban household garden project, known as “Jaden Kay” in Haitian Creole. In this program, SOIL provides working examples, resources, and research to demonstrate how even people in the most dense neighborhoods can utilize locally made compost to create a garden, even if they only have space for a couple of buckets or tires. For less than 10 USD, families can start a garden that will produce an abundance of vegetables like spinach, tomatoes, and corn. SOIL helps gardeners to know the optimal amount of compost to use to get the highest yield. SOIL has experimen...
Liberation Ecology in Unexpected Places: SOIL’s Porta-potty Makeover
Those of you who have been following SOIL for some time may know that we align with the philosophy of liberation ecology, a paradigm in which “waste” does not really exist, whether it refers to discarded materials or to people. And while it may sound obvious that people cannot be “waste,” the very frustrating reality is that our societies’ most marginalized people are often treated like they are disposable. This is a problem that goes beyond the question of ecological sustainability, and yet it is closely related. We believe in liberation ecology precisely because it points to the intersection between resource use and equitable social ...
Haitian Perspectives: Opportunities in Agriculture
When SOIL employee Joasil “Tidou” Lucny and I sit down together once a week, he patiently teaches me Haitian Creole and I help him to improve his English. He told me that he dreams of becoming an agronomist, so I asked him if he would like to write about the topic below to share with our followers, and he was very happy to share his experience and insights! “How did you begin working in agriculture and why do you think that agriculture is important for young people in Haiti?” Tidou: I feel at ease in writing about this subject because it is my area of expertise. Since I was born, my parents have practiced agriculture, so as I grew up, ...
Garden in a Bottle
At SOIL we're all about the small details. By focusing first on quality, we are able to avoid the pitfalls that were all too common in the post-earthquake surge of development organizations (such as the construction of internally displaced persons camps that had inadequate and non-user-friendly toilet options). Many organizations did fantastic emergency response work, but others focused too much on the numbers that they reported to donors and failed to work together with other groups, especially local ones. Along with attending to the finer details, SOIL promotes a more accountable and resilient mode of development by working within a collaborative ...
EcoSan Combats Climate Change
What is SOIL’s ecological footprint? We know that turning wastes into compost adds much-needed topsoil to Haiti’s eroding hillsides, and that it keeps the nutrients (not to mention the pathogens) from poop out of fresh water, but does it have ecological benefits in terms of reducing climate change? Dr. Rebecca Ryals, who is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University, came to Haiti to help us answer those questions. Rebecca sought to partner with SOIL because she is drawn to the intersection between science, public health, and social change, just like us! Through an ongoing partnership, she will measure greenhouse gas emissions from ...