Most of us remember, back in January 2010, the devastating earthquake occurred in Haiti which caused over 250,000 deaths. Then came the outbreak of cholera, which is an infection of the small intestine that causes severe diarrhea and vomiting. This outbreak is due to lack of sanitation and clean water and has caused over 400,000 Haitians became infected since the natural disaster.
It is not as if Haiti needed the earthquake to gain international attention; it had many problems even before. Two main problems were sanitation and agriculture. Currently, only 16% of rural Haitians and 50% of those in the cities have access to adequate sanitation facilities. Moreover, agricultural output is low due to poor soil fertility, soil erosion and lack of fertilizers.
Photo credit: CBC news
SOIL – Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood
Although it was amazing to see how much international attention Haiti received, there were a group of people long before 2010 that dedicated their hard work in improving the lives of Haitians. Please allow me to introduce the group SOIL – Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood.
Sasha Kramer, Executive Director and co-founder of SOIL, has been living and working in Haiti since 2004. She first came to Haiti as a human rights advocate, and in 2006 co-founded SOIL with Sarah Brownell. During that year she also received her Ph.D in Ecology from Stanford University.
Photo credit: http://www.oursoil.org/
Dry Toilet
Together, they have transformed the idea of human waste into something more valuable than gold in Haiti. They started something called “ecological sanitation,” which is a low cost approach to sanitation where human wastes are collected, composted and recycled for use in agriculture and reforestation.
Within the toilet, called dry or composting toilet, the liquid and solid parts are separated. Then after a year of composting, it becomes a nutrient rich fertilizer, which can help the agriculture by doubling the yield. SOIL have already installed more than 50 public ecological toilets for schools and community group across Northern Haiti and they are planning on expanding their project throughout the country
Photo Credit: http://www.oursoil.org/
Since the earthquake, Sasha and her team relocated to Port-au-Price to assist in relief efforts there. After weeks of distributing emergency aid, SOIL began to set up an office in Port-au Prince in response to the outbreak of cholera and sanitation crisis.
People like Sasha and organizations like SOIL reminds us two things: one- that one person indeed have the power to make a different, and two- we have all the knowledge and resources to do so. Thanks to their hard work, a country with depleted resources is having a second chance to rebuild themselves through sustainable resources.
Photo credit: CBC news
