Caring Crowd: An Interview with SOIL’s Erica Lloyd in Haiti

"While traveling to Haiti in July 2015, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with an organization called SOIL. SOIL provides sanitary toilets to communities around Port-au-Prince and uses the waste as compost for local agriculture. The organization represents an interesting example of the importance of social entrepreneurship for global health. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Erica Lloyd, Director of Systems & Cooperation at SOIL. 

Erica manages all outward-facing functions of the organization, including writing articles and arranging tours of the office for interested parties. Part of her role is also inward-facing, focusing on organizational efficiency in the business and making sure that the teams in the field have the right tools to collect the information they need. Below is a transcript of the interview.

SG: What does your organization do?

EL: SOIL develops social businesses in Haiti geared toward addressing 3 problems: (1) lack of access to sanitation; (2) decrease in local agricultural productivity; (3) and insufficient economic opportunity in the country. Composting toilets of course provide access to sanitation but they also allow for a system that captures the waste to transform it into organic compost that can be used for agriculture. Composting toilets create a resource out of something that was previously waste and, by stimulating local agriculture, provide new job opportunities."

Sara Gorman, Caring Crowd, 07 June 2016. Read the full article here.