Press Release: SOIL Selected As a Grand Challenges Canada Rising Star in Public Health

SOIL is honored to announce that we were selected as a recipient of the Grand Challenges Canada Rising Stars in Global Health Award. SOIL’s innovative new program to develop and implement a social business model for household sanitation services in Haiti is being recognized alongside 68 other “Stars in Global Health” from around the world. Recipients were selected for bold, out-of-the-box ideas to tackle debilitating disease and and save lives in the Developing World.

As a result of this award, SOIL will receive a $100,000 to help implement the household toilet project in Shada, Cap-Haitien, Haiti and will be eligible to apply for additional Grand Challenges Canada scale-up funding of $1 million.

100% Sanitation Coverage in Haiti – A Sustainable Business Model for Household Toilets in Urban Slums

The recent cholera outbreak in Haiti heightened both awareness of the problem’s cause and
demand for better sanitation services — a tough challenge in environments without reliable
running water. Meanwhile, national demand for farm and forest compost is high.
Hoping to capitalize on those twin realities, a Haitian group will build in urban slums the first new
$200, waterless “EcoSan” toilets that produce revenue-generating compost, with hopes of
inspiring entrepreneurs to replicate the project throughout Haiti and around the world, where 2.5
billion people lack sanitation access.

About SOIL

Since 2006, SOIL has building low-cost ecological toilets in Haiti that provide sanitation access to thousands of people and transform the collected wastes into compost critical for agriculture and reforestation. With the support of Grand Challenges Canada and in partnership with Konbit Sante and Re.Source sanitation, SOIL will begin installing private household toilets in northern Haiti to test a revolutionary new social business model for providing household sanitation in urban slums. The project will document the number of toilets built and people receiving sanitation services, quantity of compost produced, sales and the outcomes of tests for pathogens and nutrients.

Learn More

Read the full press release from Grand Challenges Canada here.

Learn more about SOIL’s Household Toilet Project here.

And please stay in touch via our Facebook and Twitter pages as we’ll be regularly posting updates about the household toilets.