I am writing to you tonight with a heavy heart. In one night our world changed in Haiti. When the earthquake struck I was at the SOIL house in Cap Haitien with a group of students from the University of Miami, Florida International University and Notre Dame. We were incredibly lucky in Cap-Haitien....
By Sasha Kramer, San Francisco Bay View, January 12, 2011 One year ago this morning millions of Haitians rose to greet the cool January sunshine. They walked the streets of Port au Prince, on their way to work, through the damp corridors of the capital. The National Palace towered over Champs Mars....
By Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times, December 23, 2009 SOIL, www.oursoil.org, is bringing dry, composting toilets to Haiti. Run by two remarkable American women, SOIL operates on a shoestring budget in impoverished communities. One aim is to improve sanitation and public health. Another is to compost waste so that it can be safely used as fertilizer to boost agricultural production.
Welcome to the snazzy new SOIL web site brought to you courtesy of our most recent addition to the SOIL team, web guru Nadine Mondestin. What you see here is the fruit of six months of gruelling virtual labour - we hope you like it. Thanks to those of you who have patiently encouraged us to update....
By Matt Davis, Reed Magazine, Summer 2009 In the annals of public relations, it must be reckoned a signal achievement to persuade a skeptical New York Times reporter to stick his nose in a bucket of poop. But Sasha Kramer ’99 pulled off this reverse form of gotcha journalism with ease in March when....
By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, March 28, 2009 As America’s unemployment rate rises, those paying the severest price aren’t necessarily in Detroit or Miami. One of the newest street children here in this northern Haitian city is a 10-year-old boy whose father was working in Florida but lost....
By Joel K. Bourne, Jr., National Geographic, September 2008 The problem, says ecologist and activist Sasha Kramer, is that these days Haitian farmers can't sell enough mangoes to afford imported rice. To boost food production, Kramer and colleagues founded Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a nonprofit group that builds composting toilets in rural communities to get much needed organic matter and fertility back into fields. "With the current hunger crisis, it's very clear," says Kramer, an adjunct professor at the University of Miami. "If Haitians had more local production, they would not be so vulnerable to imported food prices."