Awesome Eco(San) Projects

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Bonjou tout moun (Good morning everyone),

Well this last week was filled with visits to other projects around town - it was great to see what else is going on out there. So here's a recap (and the pictures are in order):

Sineyas After-School and Garden Program: This is a project of Give Love (SOIL's sister humanure org.). GL built several toilets for little kids to go along with the after-school program after the earthquake. The seats are small and not UD (urine-diversion) because the anatomy of kids doesn't allow for separation. So everything (urine and feces) gets composted along with food scraps from the kitchen, and they're making some beautiful compost. These are the most thriving gardens I've seen yet in Haiti - and Sineyas is right smack in the middle of one of the biggest camps. Inspiring.

Grass Roots United (now Haiti Communitere): An over-arching organization with a huge compound to host many smaller NGO's and projects getting started. This is a rad place with construction projects like earthships, strawbale houses, plastic bottle houses, geodesic domes, earthbag houses, and shipping container houses. The coolest thing is the Ubuntu block project which compresses styrofoam take-out containers (thousands litter the streets) into contruction blocks to build houses, so they are super light if another earthquake happens. Give Love also has compost piles here and a project building transportable compost toilets kid-size while permanent ones are being built. Not to mention their is an aquaponics system going, chickens, a goat, family dinners once a week, and a huge workshop to carry out all your construction ideas.

Viva Rio: A Brazilian NGO that rapidly expanded after the earthquake with programs supporting camps with potable water, a 4 month free construction trade program, and a biodigester program. I followed along one day, helping transfer bagasse from Barbancor (the Rum producer here) to Viva Rio because they were going to empty a biodigester (for the first time) and were experimenting composting the biosolids. Unfortunately, the sewage truck broke down and the emptying didn't happen that day, so I hung out with Capoeira program. So fun! It was the kids class that day so i got to play around with some amazing young acrobats. I hope to attend the adult classes soon.

Pax Christi: A SOIL/Bochika collaboration in Site Soley (declared the most dangerous neighborhood in Haiti...it's definitely very impoverished). That day we were hosting National Geographic's Young Photographers program - 30 Haitians from all around that were selected to participate in the 1 week program and learn about photography. They went crazy taking pictures of everything, though not many pictures of the toilets hahaha. Pax Christi appeared in my first blog post from the SOIL picture archives, saying that I hoped to visit this site...so now I have! While the photo students were in the neighborhoods shooting, I hung out with the local kids and played some barefoot futbol. My love for kids has exploded here!

In other news, it's Carnival! I'm not sure I'll be able to get to Okai for the big celebrations - we'll see if I can get a ride today...plis pi ta! (more later!)

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