March 2013 Newsletter: Springtime in the Caribbean

Dear SOIL friends,

Springtime in the Caribbean. Passing motorcycles rev their engines, in the distance horns honk, several radios play simultaneously, roosters crow, children play, the internet doesn’t always work, and it is sunny! In the SOIL office we are greeted by the cheerful faces of people arriving early in the morning with a warm “bon jou!” and a full plan of activities. Somehow, while we weren’t quite paying attention, SOIL became a smoothly functioning, efficient, neighborhood institution. The needs we are facing are as critical as ever, but month after month we keep going strong with lots of success stories to report and we are starting to notice that we are living the Haitian proverb “pi ti pi ti, zwazo fè nich li” / “little by little, the bird makes its nest”.

In honor of this positive momentum and in honor of how far we’ve come in building our nest, this month we are writing to ask that you might consider setting up an automatically recurring monthly contribution. Recurring donations are worth way more than their dollar amount. As we get by on a tiny budget and the ebbs and flows of foundation checks, recurring donations provide us with guaranteed income that helps us keep going strong with our critical programs through lean times. And, perhaps even more importantly, the support of our dear friends around the world helps rally our spirits and gives us strength to keep going.

We currently bring in almost $700 in monthly recurring donations. Today we are asking you to set up a monthly contribution of any amount, $10, $25, $50, and all together help us reach $2,500 in monthly donations. If we achieve this goal, together, in one month, our recurring donors will be able to build a new public toilet block or pay all our public toilet manager monthly salaries, and with two months of donations we could buy land for an extension to our farm or cover the entire cost of our transformative educational program.

Please visit our website here to set up a recurring donation to SOIL of any amount and then visit our blog to read the latest news. This month the US CDC released a report that our composting process safely and effectively treats human wastes, we built a new tool for building toilet seats locally using a vacuum cleaner, a stove top burner and a roll of tin foil, our cholera-fighting compost technology was featured in The Guardian, our compost nearly doubled the yield of local peanuts in experimental trials, Haiti Business Week ran a feature story of our business model for providing sustainable sanitation services in Haiti, and we set up public ecological sanitation toilets for Haiti’s national carnival in Cap-Haitien.

Thank you for all your support, well wishes and friendship,

the SOIL team

SET UP A MONTHLY SOIL DONATION TODAY

SOIL pride at the Haiti National Carnival 2013