105 results for tag: sanitation
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 the ongoing sanitation crisis even as Haiti faces ongoing natural disasters. ...
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 services. As you may have heard, there has just been a confirmed outbreak of ...
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% of these deaths.
Please help SOIL respond to the continuing sanitation crisis ...
AOL News: Sanitation Efforts Target Sea of Sewage in Haiti
By Emily Troutman, AOL News, August 24, 2010 Amy Ross navigates the filthy, feces-strewn backstreets here in flip-flops and a miniskirt, bobbing along quite happily, giving the distinct impression that she's either been in this city too long or not long enough. Ross is a program manager for Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, or SOIL, a Haiti-based organization that specializes in toilets, or what the humanitarian community euphemistically refers to as "sanitation." Ross' good humor makes her an ideal candidate for this job, in which she is routinely talking about, or surrounded by ... waste. On this day, Ross is on her way to a ...
Breaking the Cycle of Disease by Closing the Nutrient Cycle: SOIL and the Sanitation Crisis in Port-au-Prince
Dear friends, I am sorry that I have been out of touch for the past several weeks. Every day is like a lifetime and at the end we just collapse into bed after a cold shower, and in the morning we sit up and look out at the camp spread before us and the whirlwind begins again. But most of us have managed to hold on to our sanity, tethering our minds to our work. As the weeks go by the city begins to look more familiar, the shattered buildings have become a part of my mindscape and there are moments when I barely notice them. People wind through the traffic jams and the streets are lined with vendors, people who have left the camps during the ...