SOIL Moves to New Home in North Haiti!

This week SOIL staff bid a fond farewell to our home of seven years in the center of Cap-Haitien – and said hello to our newly built 1800+ square foot home in the countryside outside the city!

The site is conveniently located between our experimental farm and our composting waste treatment facility in Limonade. The building houses SOIL’s Cap-Haitien Sanitation, Agriculture, Administrative, and Technical Departments, as well as providing space for new laboratory facilities, a multilingual library, and a conference room that looks out onto our beautiful gardens.

The design for the new office is inspired by both local architecture and off-the grid technology. Thanks to support from the Meyer and Esther Mazor Foundation and NRG, solar energy powers the entire facility, including the pumps that serve water to the office and irrigate the fields.  The multi-tiered roof features large wells that provide both light and ventilation (in fact, as I sit writing this on my first workday here, I am amazed and delighted with how cool and breezy the office is – no fan needed)!  And, of course, we have composting toilets – two beautiful new models built by local carpenters. As is apparent in the photos, there is still some work to be done to finish the new SOIL facility – floor tiling, wall plastering, and interior/exterior painting – but we are already enjoying life in our beautiful new space.

However, the best feature of the new office is one you won’t see in the pictures below: the price tag. It’s a much more cost-effective space, so we’ll be able to dedicate even more of our budget to the important work we’re doing in Haiti. Many thanks to the 11th Hour Project, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, the Meyer and Esther Mazor Foundation, NRG, and all our friends and supporters around the world for helping us realize this dream. We hope you’ll come for a visit!