Latest Updates
SOIL’s 2011 Calendar is Out
SOIL volunteer, Corinne Coe, helped us put together a beautiful calendar featuring the best photos from our Looking Through Their Eyes photo empowerment project and we now need your help distributing them. All proceeds from calendar sales will directly benefit SOIL's ongoing relief work. Please help us make 2011 a better year in Haiti! If you are planning an event, looking for a unique holiday present or know a group of people that might be interested in purchasing one (take them to your office!), please let us know. We ask that you purchase calendars in packs of 10 or ...
SOIL Stays Vigilant as News Breaks That Cholera Has Reached Port-au-Prince
The worst case scenario has happened - cholera has arrived in Port-au-Prince - and SOIL is continuing to do everything possible to limit the spread of the disease, to provide safe sanitation services, and to keep people informed on the best methods to prevent and treat it. SOIL's "Ajan Prevansyon" / Cholera Prevention Agents, having gone to every tent in every camp where SOIL works, are beginning to spread out to reach communities where information on the prevention and treatment of cholera has not yet been disseminated. Sadly, this is not a short term problem. The Pan ...
Tropical Storm Tomas Passes By But The Sanitation Crisis Continues
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 we work, and SOIL's executive director, Sasha Kramer, is at her godson's baptism. The city is quiet and calm as people slowly return to their lives and work. Right before the storm came, SOIL met with a writer for the Chrisitian Science Monitor to talk about the need to address ...
Cholera Outbreak Emergency Update
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 where it continues to contaminate the groundwater) and with this comes a serious level of responsibility. SOIL is taking every precautionary measure possible to contain the extent of the outbreak, including: Continuing to provide clean and hygienic sanitation services for over ...
A Visitor’s Update: SOIL’s Response to the Cholera Epidemic
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 facilities. SOIL has been building ecological sanitation solutions in Haiti for four years, but their organization has quadrupled since the earthquake in January as they’ve been building public toilets in camps that are serving over 25,000 people with basic sanitation ...
Diarrhea Outbeak Has Claimed at Least 50 Lives in the Past 72 hours
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 of people do not have access to a toilet and those toiletsthat do exist almost always discharge directly into either the street, open water, or underground pits, 12% of children die before age 5 and waterborne illness is the second most prevalent cause, responsible for 16.5% ...
Notre Dame Student Finds That SOIL Compost is Pathogen Free
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 poo per week into nutrient rich fertilizer. Now thanks to John’s study, we have evidence that SOIL’s efforts are paying off. John found that pathogenic material present in the human waste that SOIL freshly collected from ecological sanitation toilets around Haiti ...
Haiti 6 Months Later: Frozen in Time
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 in the hotel across the street and be awakened by singing from that church. In January, when I returned to the hotel, the church was a mound of cement and twisted iron with a cross that dangled precariously into the street. Now there is just a hole, an empty space that ...
Update to Our Supporters
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 update in March our team has been working 50-60 hours per week on sanitation projects in both Port au Prince and Cap Haitien and it has been hard to find space for reflection and communication. It is late Sunday night and the moon is shining down on the capital, reflecting on the ...
SOIL in Port-au-Prince
Following the earthquake, SOIL has extended operations to Port-au-Prince and begun a new project with OXFAM GB to pilot ecological sanitation in emergency settings. This project will accomplish the construction and installation of 150 toilets in small IDP (internally displaced persons) camps throughout the city, the establishment of a compost facility in Port-au-Prince, and the training of 100 masons to build urine diversion (UD) toilets.
We have been hard at work setting up operations in PAP and have been so proud of the reactions, adoption, and results thus far!
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