SAKALA Haiti: Growing Food Security From Plastic Trash

1.) At the SAKALA community center in Cité Soleil -- the largest underserved neighborhood in Haiti -- we are battling a triple threat of problems: unmanaged plastic trash, high unemployment, and food insecurity.

2.) One solution we have is to re-use plastic bottles and other plastic trash to make drip irrigation systems and gardening containers to use in Jaden Tap Tap, Haiti's largest urban garden -- itself growing on land SAKALA reclaimed from an old dump.

 If we could scale this effort we envision a clean factory to process this plastic and make gardening containers and drip irrigation systems. In the process we will create good jobs and food security as we reduce the plastic trash in the streets of Cité Soleil.

3.) While Cité Soleil's situation is extreme, there are many communities in the Caribbean that are facing the triple threat of plastic trash, high unemployment, and food insecurity.

Several large canals clogged several feet deep with trash cut through the neighborhoods of Cité Soleil, Haiti that are home to about 300,000 people.    Impromptu roadside dumps dot the landscape as well and the main way the people here cope with the overwhelming volume of this trash is to burn it, filling the air with toxic smoke.

To make matters worse: most of this trash did not even originate in Cité Soleil. Cité Soleil's sea level location means that the trash that accumulates there comes from neighborhoods farther up the hillsides and mountains of Port-au-Prince. 

And unlike in those neighborhoods, which are generally much wealthier, there is little incentive for the government or other powerful leaders to address the problems in deeply impoverished Cité Soleil.

So the people of Cité Soleil are left to deal with this themselves.

Any solution to the plastic trash problem in Cité Soleil and communities like it needs to also address the tremendous poverty and food insecurity there by creating good jobs and access to nutritious, locally grown food.

The SAKALA community center in Cité Soleil was founded in 2006 by people who grew up in the community to give youths peaceful alternatives to joining gangs. They started with peace-through-sports programs where soon youths from neighborhoods who were fighting each other began playing soccer together. Soon they shared not only sports, but their dreams for a better life.

So SAKALA has a long history of working in the community and of finding alternatives to disastrous situations.

Community leaders have held meetings at SAKALA about how to address the trash problem in Cité Soleil. They held a press conference directly on the trash canal adjacent to SAKALA to call on government leaders to act on what everyone in Cité Soleil agrees is a grave threat to their community.

SAKALA's plastic-to-food-security initiative will address the needs here by offering alternatives to burning to reduce the volume of plastic trash. The gardening containers and drip irrigation systems made from the recycled trash can easily be used in home gardens, improving food security family by family. 

Longterm, a plastic processing factory would be a source of jobs while greatly increasing the amount of plastic taken out of the streets, dumps and trash canals.

At SAKALA we have started collecting plastic bottles and other plastic trash first to get it off the streets and remove it as an environmental threat.

Much of the trash collected is sent to the recycling center in Port-au-Prince, but some we keep to make drip irrigation systems for SAKALA's community garden, Jaden Tap Tap, which is the largest urban garden in Haiti.

So with the resources we have now, we can, with minimal processing of plastic, we can create the drip irrigation systems. You can see a little of how this works in this video made about SAKALA leader Daniel Tillias when he was named a CNN Hero in 2019. 

We also can use plastic bottles to make garden fences and recycling containers.

But this is clearly not enough. 

For one thing much of the plastic trash clogging Cité Soleil's streets and canals and threatening its coastline is not plastic bottles. It is such things as plastic bags, old TVs, broken household appliances, and styrofoam take-out containers. 

While we do make planters out of the plastic casing of old TVs, most of this plastic needs to take another form for it to be useful. Something moldable into large plastic gardening containers and building materials. 

To carry out this work we need technology and resources.

Longterm, we would like to see a plastic-processing and recycling factory in Cité Soleil where we can collect, sort, and process the plastic trash so it can be molded into the things we need, such as gardening containers.

The gardening containers and drip irrigation systems manufactured from recycled and processed plastic trash could be used in home and community gardens, mitigating the food security issue in Cité Soleil and other urban areas where land is scarce.

The factory itself would grow good clean jobs in the environmental services industry. We envision that it would become a model of what is possible in other communities like Cité Soleil throughout the world.

It is this kind of solution that will begin to address the triple threat of unmanaged plastic trash, high unemployment, and food insecurity facing Cité Soleil and communities like it throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

With plastic trash choking the drainage canals and streets of Cité Soleil, the default is to just see it as an environmental disaster. 

And it is an environmental disaster. 

This problem is not abstract for the Cité Soleil -- every time it rains, the streets flood with water and waste. When the trash volume gets too high, they have to manage it by burning it, which releases toxic smoke into the atmosphere.

So the first thing that makes this solution innovative is that it is an approach that looks at what would seem to many to be an impossible situation, but instead of giving up, we start chipping away at solutions.

There is a well known proverb that says in Haiti behind this mountain there are yet more mountains. There is also a proverb that says "piti a piti zwazo fè niche" little by little the bird builds its nest.

Yes, the environmental disaster, of which plastic trash is a big part, puts mountains and mountains of obstacles in the path of the people here. 

But little by little you start. 

You start with one plastic bottle and you water one seed. The rest will grow from there.

Our theory of change is that by looking at plastic trash as a potential resource and transforming it into gardening containers and drip irrigation systems, we can have the direct output of a greatly increased number of home gardens. The gardens will also be more productive because of the  water-conserving, and abundantly available drip irrigation systems.

Longterm outcomes for the population if we are able to scale this initiative would be greater food security, a cleaner, healthier environment and an improved economic picture as residents could have jobs in the collection and processing of plastic trash as well as the manufacture of gardening containers.

We have seen evidence of this already with our success with Jaden Tap Tap, the community garden at SAKALA.

Jaden Tap Tap was built on the site of an old dump. If you had looked at the dump before -- like many of the dumps that mar the landscapes of Cité Soleil -- you would not think anything would ever grow there. You would not think it could be anything but a dump.

But the area was cleaned. Gardening containers were made out of recycled tires and other mostly plastic trash. 

We grew vegetables and planted trees -- especially moringa trees, which are known for their high protein, vitamin-rich leaves and which grow in the toughest of conditions.

Jaden Tap Tap is now Haiti's largest urban garden. An oasis of calm and green in Cité Soleil and also a center of learning for young agricultural entrepreneurs.

We currently directly serve the 300 youths and children who are direct beneficiaries of the SAKALA community center (meaning they receive school support, after school tutoring and a daily meal as well as taking part in sports, chess, and gardening programs.

But SAKALA indirectly reaches thousands in the community.

The major environmental impact so far is that at SAKALA we have grown the largest urban garden in Haiti. It is open to the community and is a source of hope that things can grow again in Cité Soleil. 

In the last two years, SAKALA has established a plastic collection center. We take most of the plastic to the recycling center in Port-au-Prince.

The social impact so far is that SAKALA is a center of education and peaceful refuge in Cité Soleil. It is a hub of community activity.

Economic: SAKALA is a source of jobs. By providing school support to hundreds of children and young adults SAKALA improves their economic prospects and also enables schools to stay open in very poor areas.

SAKALA is a peace center that increasingly is taking on environmental issues both as a matter of survival in Cité Soleil but also because we believe the new better world starts here.

In the next year we would have to establish a pilot project processing plastic and making gardening containers that could be used immediately in home and community gardens in Cité Soleil. We would also like to start making building materials out of plastic.

In the next five years, we would hope to have an actual plastic processing factory up and running in Cité Soleil that will be a model that can be scaled for the world and will show what can be done in even the toughest conditions.

The obstacles Cité Soleil --and Haiti in general -- face are unimaginable to most people living in the US. 

The parents of SAKALA's beneficiaries report an average income of less than $30 a month -- and even that is not stable.

Beyond the individual struggles, infrastructure is poor in Haiti. Roads are broken down, electricity and internet work only sporadically at best.

In Haiti, particularly in the last couple of years the political instability has brought the country to a standstill more than once, exacerbating the already harsh economic conditions.

We don't yet have the technology  training to really pull off what we need to do because the cost of that infrastructure is prohibitive and investment in our community hard to come by.

 It creates an almost permanent-seeming Catch 22 -- you can't make the fixes needed without the technology and resources but you won't attract the technology and resources without substantially improving the situation on the ground.

At SAKALA our motto is "With a dream anything is possible." 

So our first tool in addressing these barriers is imagination. Asking what is possible when it would be easier to declare everything is impossible.

After we have imagined what is possible we seek partners who will help us get there. 

So with Jaden Tap Tap, for example, with limited resources the community planted Haiti's largest urban garden in 2012 on the site of an old dump with the help of a capacity-building nonprofit based in Florida.

Five years later, SAKALA was awarded a large grant by the UN in Haiti to train 100 at-risk youths in Cité Soleil in the agricultural entrepreneurial areas of bee-keeping, market gardening, moringa product transformation, compost production, and tree nursery management.

Remember "piti a piti zwazo fè niche." We always have to start small and build on small successes before we can achieve the big dreams.

Our current activities are limited to Cité Soleil and Haiti generally.

Approximately 20 SAKALA staff and volunteers will work on this solution. Currently we do not have the resources to dedicate someone full-time to this.

The SAKALA team is led by Daniel Tillias, who was named a CNN Hero in 2019 for his work in the community and building international partnerships.

SAKALA was founded by people, like Tillias, who grew up in Cité Soleil and so the knowledge of the community predates even SAKALA's founding in 2006.

Over the years the SAKALA team has earned the trust of the community by being a reliable and selfless resource center, enabling hundreds of children to go to school.

Because SAKALA has already done "impossible" things in Cité Soleil, the community is willing to take the leap of faith necessary to start implementing the big solutions necessary for a happier, healthier life.

Currently SAKALA has a grant from the US Embassy in Haiti for pilot project on waste collection and compost production using bicycle-hauled trailers.

SAKALA also is part of a large drainage-canal cleaning project sponsored by the Haiti branch of the International Labor Organization.

It also currently has grants from the Go Campaign, the Hendrickson Family Foundation, and American Jewish World Service.

Our basic business model will be a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) model in which funding will come from government and non-profits who have a mission to improve life and the environment in Haiti. We would also hope to have funding from businesses who would benefit from a cleaner environment with less plastic trash in the street. In the longterm, we would also hope to make money from sales of our products.

The first beneficiaries of this solution will be the people of Cité Soleil. They will also be the first customers along with funders and businesses who engage our services.

We believe the Payment for Environmental Services model could provide a sustainable income for the longterm. The plastic-to-garden containers and irrigation drip systems would just be part of an overall package of environmental services we would offer. Other services would include compost production, tree planting and community gardening projects.

We are applying to the Rethink Plastics Challenge because we have the expertise on what can work in Cité Soleil and communities like it throughout Haiti, Latin America and the Caribbean. We have ideas for solutions to the complex and difficult problems we face.

But we need the resources -- financial, technical, and business -- to help us begin to implement these ideas. See what works and what doesn't. 

Right now we start to implement these ideas but often have to stop for lack of resources. So we don't know in the end if the ideas themselves failed or if we just did not have the human and financial resources to make it a success.

To be specific: one day we hope to see a plastic-processing factory in Cité Soleil, one that is a source of good, reliable jobs in which employees work in good conditions that respects their human rights.

A solid enterprise like that would in turn have economic, environmental and social ripple effects in the community.

We would like to see this factory become a model for what can happen in other communities like Cité Soleil.

But we need a lot of expertise and investment to help us reach this dream. We believe the IDB Group and MIT are uniquely qualified to help us overcome the challenges we are facing.

We would like to partner with the MIT Design Lab, environmental organizations, and also recycling businesses such as TerraCycle.