Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods

SOIL has been working in some of the poorest areas in Haiti since 2006 to facilitate the community-identified priority of ecological sanitation (EcoSan), where human wastes are converted into valuable organic compost. EcoSan simultaneously tackles some of Haiti’s toughest challenges: providing improved sanitation to millions of people who would otherwise have no access to a toilet while at the same time producing thousands of gallons of compost a week which is critical for agriculture and reforestation. Following the 2010 earthquake, SOIL built emergency toilets in camps throughout Port-au-Prince, providing sanitation services for thousands of people displaced by the earthquake. In Cap-Haitien, SOIL maintains 3 public toilet facilities in Shada, a neighborhood particularly hard hit by cholera, providing critical sanitation access to more than 2,000 people.

Haiti has the lowest access to improved sanitation in the western hemisphere. When no toilets or sanitation services are available, open defecation becomes a health hazard both to the community and the environment.  Nearly three years after the earthquake, and in the aftermath of a devastating cholera outbreak, many of SOIL’s emergency toilets remain in operation and continue to provide a crucial resource to people still living in urban camps. For many of these people, a toilet can mean the difference between life and death, between the return of cholera and the possibility of health.