Climate Action Haiti Project #16307

Generating Organic Compost for Farming in Haiti

by SOIL

Project Report | Mar 6, 2024
SOIL's Quick Response in Limonade

By Christine Simek | Development Director

Members of the SOIL team visiting neighborhoods in

Despite the ongoing political, social & health-related challenges that have made significant impacts on our staff and our customers over the past several years, there are also great achievements to celebrate, particularly among the members of our team in Haiti, who, despite the considerable hardships, continue to work tirelessly and together and have not lost hope. We are deeply grateful for each and every one.

One of the advantages of SOIL’s long-time work and deep roots in Haiti is that it enables us to respond quickly to a crisis, allowing us to provide critical and immediate support to families in and around Cap-Haitien when the need arises. Late last month, a doctor from a clinic in Limonade visited the EkoLakay offices to inform us of a concerning outbreak of diarrheal disease that had taken hold in his community. Knowing that we provide sanitation services there already, he asked if there was any way we could intervene to increase the number of households with access to the service to curb its spread. Our staff members sprang into action, understanding that our EkoLakay sanitation service is a critical part of mitigating many kinds of waterborne diseases.

During the holiday break, when the SOIL office is generally closed, the SOIL sales team went door to door with community health agents in Bord Mer Limonade, sharing information about disease mitigation, promoting good hygiene practices, and offering reduced pricing for EkoLakay toilets. We were pleased to learn from our conversations with members of the households we visited that there is strong interest in having a toilet, and an understanding that it's one of the best ways to slow the spread of disease and, due to high demand, we have since installed 54 toilets in the neighborhood! We will follow up with other interested families in the coming weeks and remain in contact with the clinic as they continue to monitor the situation.

SOIL was founded in the spirit of working side-by-side with Haitian citizens and within communities to build ecological sanitation solutions that could be community-led. That principle idea of community-driven impact continues to guide our work every day and has also provided a valuable framework for how we respond during emergency events that impact Haiti. The political instability and economic distress in Haiti will not immediately right itself and we recognize that daily life for most Haitians will remain full of adversity and uncertainty for the foreseeable future. But, as we have since our founding 17 years ago, SOIL will continue to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti.

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Nov 16, 2023
SOIL Participates in Water & Sanitation Forum

By Christine Simek | Acting Development Director

SOIL is pleased to have been a part of a new Water and Sanitation Sectorial Forum, focused on the northern region of Haiti, that convened for its inaugural session earlier this year. The goal of the forum is to strengthen consultation between local actors working in the areas of solid waste management, drinking water and sanitation, in order to support one another in the planning of interventions, increase the efficiency of resources mobilized, and encourage the participation of the local population around ongoing projects. These discussions signify a move towards much needed and greater collaboration in the WASH sector in Haiti.

In recent years, the city of Cap-Haitien and the northern region of Haiti have received a wave of migration of populations from other departments of the country, largely due to ongoing insecurity in Port au Prince and surrounding area. The population increase in the north has put a strain on the already limited resources and aggravated the deficiencies of local public infrastructure and basic social services, such as roads, electricity, solid waste collection, water supply, drinking water and sanitation.

The new sanitation sectoral coordination has outlined the specific objectives of the group as:

To organize a formal space for communication and exchange of information and good practices
To map the main projects and programs underway in the target sectors
To share and disseminate relevant information and data, to facilitate decision-making and the coordination of actions relating to the management of solid waste, drinking water and sanitation

SOIL staff members presented to the group of key actors, highlighting SOIL’s EkoLakay activities for the provision of household sanitation in the neighborhoods of Cap-Haitien.

At SOIL, we understand the power of teamwork and are always seeking to collaborate with local stakeholders who provide valuable input and strategic cooperation as we all work towards the common goal of providing safe, affordable sanitation to the people of Haiti.

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Jul 27, 2023
SOIL Researchers Make Data Publicly Available

By Christine Simek | Development and Communications Specialist

Since the fall of 2022, Haiti has faced escalating instability, a scarcity of goods and services, and ongoing political unrest. While these challenges affect the population at large, it is often the country’s most vulnerable citizens who shoulder the heaviest burden during difficult times – their already tenuous access to food and fuel and other services made ever more precarious.

Compounding the ongoing humanitarian crisis, is the recent resurgence of cholera in Haiti. Over the past few months, as our team learned more about the worsening cholera outbreak, we decided to quickly pivot to find a way to reach Cap-Haitien’s most at-risk residents to rapidly expand our sanitation service and mitigate against the spread of cholera. We did this by offering installation discounts in targeted geographic zones to households with the greatest need.

This targeted effort was made possible by using innovative mapping tools that the SOIL research team has been compiling to better understand the characteristics around socio-economic household data and the geographic nuances of the low lying coastal area. To build these tools, SOIL’s research team was aware of two spatial mapping projects of Cap-Haitien that had been carried out by USAID and the World Bank and reached out to those organizations who agreed to share their valuable data with us.

Data compiled from the World Bank project (1) provided 5-year flood event recurrence and the USAID study (2) presented specifics regarding population density, socioeconomic status, suggested sewage construction priority zones, and suggested pit latrine regulations. SOIL Researcher Maya Lubeck-Schricker conducted a sanitation technology suitability analysis using this spatial data to further identify the key areas in Cap-Haitien that are most suitable for Container Based Sanitation (CBS) technology and, concurrently, the most vulnerable to cholera transmission.

The SOIL operations team was then able to use the final suitability map to identify specific zones to target in their service expansion push in November and December of last year (at the height of the cholera outbreak), during which time we installed 300 new household toilets servicing 1,500 people! The SOIL teams are continuing to use these mapping tools to make other strategic service expansion decisions and thoughtfully inform our operations to nimbly respond to on the ground needs.

“These geospatial mapping tools are invaluable for ensuring that we use our resources effectively to target areas that are most vulnerable to climate and public health risks, using science as a tool for equity and impact.” ~ SOIL’s Executive Director

Given that the spatial data collected by the USAID and World Bank teams was crucial to SOIL’s analysis and subsequent decision-making regarding new toilet installations, Maya worked towards publishing the data files on the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) website, an open platform for sharing data across crises and organizations, managed by OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs), so that future practitioners can freely access and use the data without having to know the right people or the right projects. In February SOIL was approved as an official organization on the HDX website, recognized as a trusted source to share relevant data with the HDX community, and our team quickly shared and accredited the data used from USAID and the World Bank.

One of SOIL’s strengths is our commitment to communicating with other research and development teams in the Cap-Haitien area and our collegial relationships with other organizations. The open lines of communication and collaboration allow us to stay up to date with the varying projects and data collection activities happening in the region that are often cross-cutting among sectors. This coordination encourages the sharing of information and data among the many organizations working for the common good in Haiti.

SOIL’s research team is always dedicated to sharing their work and findings not just internally to improve our service, but also publicly – with researchers and practitioners around the world – who are all working towards the betterment of the future and of our world.

(1) Plan d’Élaboration propre basée sur les données de la Banque Mondiale: Inondation de Récurrence (5 ans / 25 ans / 100 ans).(2) These data were developed under the USAID Water and Sanitation Project in collaboration with the Cap-Haitian municipal government and DINEPA.

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