It is cool and cloudy in Haiti this morning, and we've gotten reports that Tropical Storm Tomas has mostly blown by. SOIL's agronomist, Jean Marie Noel, is on his way out to our main compost site to check on the damage, SOIL's deputy director, Nick Preneta, is fielding updates from the camps where....
By Isabeau Doucet, Christian Science Monitor, November 4, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Between 500 and 900 cubic meters of raw sewage is dumped daily at Troutier, according to Theo Huitema, World Vision’s water and sanitation expert. He disagrees that the sewage is necessarily contaminating the local water supply, though he says that it would be better to dump it further outside the city. But Sasha Kramer of SOIL, an NGO that has constructed dry compost toilets in Haiti since 2004, says the decision to unload human waste into the city’s garbage dump at Troutier was disastrous. “They need to close off Troutier, put a fence around the pits, and have patrols out there monitoring and cleaning,” she says.
Thank you for keeping us in your hearts as you read the news about the spreading cholera outbreak in Haiti. SOIL has the dubious honor of being one of the very few organizations or institutions actually treating human waste (as opposed to the typical practice of dumping it untreated into locations....
Dear Friends of SOIL, I flew into Haiti yesterday morning to see my friend Leah (SOIL's Development Director). Within a few hours of my arrival in Port-au-Prince, Leah brought me to the tent city in Cite Soleil where her organization, SOIL, has been installing toilets and rainwater-fed hand washing....
News agencies are reporting that an outbreak of diarrhea has claimed at least 50 lives in the past 72 hours in central Haiti along the Artibonite river. Diarrhea, which is a preventable and treatable disease, is inexcusably a major cause of death in developing countries. In Haiti, where the majority....
John Strutner from the University of Notre Dame recently traveled from Indiana to Haiti in order to collect samples of SOIL’s compost and test it for fecal pathogens. SOIL assiduously follows international public health standards for the composting of human waste as it converts over 5,000 gallons of....
Our SOIL Newsletter - Fall 2010 is out with lots of updates on our latest projects. If you didn't receive your own copy by email and you'd like to in the future, please sign up for email updates in the box to the right. In This Issue When Toilets Go Bad SOIL's EcoSan Toilets Revolutionize Emergency....
By Emily Troutman, AOL News, August 24, 2010 Amy Ross navigates the filthy, feces-strewn backstreets here in flip-flops and a miniskirt, bobbing along quite happily, giving the distinct impression that she's either been in this city too long or not long enough. Ross is a program manager for....
Six months later and sometimes it feels like we will be stuck in January 2010 forever. It as if we are frozen in time, looking out on the hillsides covered with tents. Every once in a while we will notice a change, like the empty space where the church used to be on Delmas 53. For years I would stay....
Dear friends, Tomorrow marks 6 months since the devastating earthquake. I wanted to take this evening to reflect on the past 6 months and to share with you some of our activities and challenges. It has been months since my last letter and I apologize for the lack of communication. Since my last....