Cholera is a serious disease that can kill within 3 hours from severe dehydration if not treated promptly and appropriately. There had not been recorded cases of Cholera in Haiti for over 100 years until raw sewage was dumped in the Artibonite River in October 2010. 10 months after the earthquake shook Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, hundreds more people began to die of an entirely preventable disease. Soon the illness had spread to the entire country, and now to the entire island of Hispaniola. As of June 2011, over 275,000 people have become ill with cholera and 5,400 people have died.
The work of Youthaiti anticipated this kind of ecological tragedy. When 85% of the population practices open-defecation, it is a disaster waiting to happen. Since 2007 we have been building ecological toilets and educating people in the rural areas about hygiene and sanitation. Properly treated, human excrement can be turned into ‘black gold’.
YOUTHAITI is a 501(c)3 non-profit founded in March 2008 to help support the work of Haitian youth in repairing their country. We engage in projects of ecological sanitation including:
- 3 styles of composting toilets
- organic gardens utilizing the recycled waste
- community hygiene education
- re-forestation
Everything is aimed at breaking the cycle of contamination that makes so many Haitian children sick, and increasing crop productivity with free organic fertilizer!!
Dry composting toilets remove all waste from the environment without contaminating or using water. They then return it to the land in the form of fertilizer and soil amendments. Arborloos provide a safe place to dispose of waste and grow trees.
The three styles of composting toilets are the dry toilet, Arborloo, and Fossa Alterna.
The dry toilet is built entirely above ground, avoiding the risk of contaminating ground water. It has a special urine-diverting toilet bowl that enables us to collect urine to use diluted as fertilizer. Notice your household fertilizer is mostly Nitrogen? So is your pee! The solid waste is combined with soil or ash and collects in one of two chambers. When the first chamber is full, it is sealed for one year to kill off all the parasites and bacteria. The toilet bowl is moved to the alternate side. After one year the first chamber is emptied – now a fine, odorless powder, ready to put on the garden! And the process is reversed and repeated. We are using this process with our demonstration gardens – you will soon see photos of those results!
The Arborloo is an inexpensive, shallow pit latrine, less than 1 meter deep. It is covered by a movable concrete slab, and a movable house. The human waste is layered with other organic waste such as soil, ash or kitchen scraps. When the hole is almost full, the slab and house are moved, the hole is topped off with soil and a fruit tree is planted. It is ‘self-fertilized’! YOUTHAITI has a small tree nursery to provide households with a fruit tree that will provide both food and income to a family.
The Fossa Alterna is similar to the Arborloo. However, many households do not have room to plant trees in their yard. Instead 2 shallow pits are dug with movable covers. When one pit is full, it is covered for 6 – 12 months while the other pit is used. When the second is full, the first one is dug out and the compost is either placed on a ‘secondary’ compost pile, or if dried enough, it can be applied directly to the garden. Crops can grow 7 times larger with the application of compost!
Community demonstration gardens are being established near every dry toilet. Community members are engaged in planning and planting the gardens, under the supervision of our Agronomist. Dilute urine is applied when watering the garden. Compost is used as available. In this way everyone can see the benefits of recycling human wastes!
None of this works without Community Education. We are in the process of launching a comprehensive Community Education program, adapting models used in Africa and elsewhere in Haiti. We will engage youth and families in education about hygiene, clean water, sanitation and organic gardening.
