Sasha Kramer is an ecologist and human rights advocate
from California who has been working in
northern Haiti
since 2004. Sasha first visited Haiti,
while still a doctoral student at StanfordUniversity, as part of a human rights
delegation sent to observe the first demonstration in northern Haiti following
the February coup d'etat. Since then she visited Haiti 12 times,
acting as an independent journalist and human rights observer, visiting
prisons, taking testimony for victims of violence and observing demonstrations.
Sasha received a Ph.D. in Ecology from StanfordUniversity, where her dissertation
focused on human disturbance of the global nitrogen cycle and its impacts on
the earth's ecosystems. She became interested in ecological sanitation as
a means to reduce the need for imported fertilizers by recycling nutrients in
human wastes. In 2006, after finishing graduate school Sasha co-founded the
non-profit organization Sustainable Integrated Organic Livelihoods (SOIL) based
in northern Haiti.
Sasha is also an Adjunct Professor of International Studies and a Visiting
Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University
of Miami, where she teaches a hands-on
course called Sustainable Development Challenges in Haiti as a means for passing on her
practical knowledge of development work in an academic framework.
SOIL is dedicated to protecting soil resources,
empowering communities and transforming wastes into resources in Haiti. SOIL
promotes the idea that the path to sustainability is through transformation of
both, disempowered people and discarded materials, turning apathy and pollution
into valuable resources. SOIL encourages integrated approaches to the problems
of poverty, poor public health, agricultural productivity, and environmental
destruction by developing collaborative, mutually educational relationships
between community organizations in Haiti and academics and activists
internationally: Building the soil, empowering communities, supporting the
grassroots.
