Sustainable Soil Maldives

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€3,156 Raised

€3,500 Goal

90% Reached

56 donors

56 donations

€3,156 Raised

from €3,500 (90%)

€3,500 Goal

90% Reached

56 donors

56 donations

Hi!

We are Sustainable Soil Maldives and we are setting up a composting of organic waste project based in Addu, Maldives. Under supervision of the TUdelft are we, Sterre Breedijk, Ruth Vraka, Thom van der Ent and Nicolaas van Zuylen, engaging on the project. To possibly destroy your expectation, the Maldives is not only crystal-clear seas and pure white beaches. The Maldives have many problems such as waste management, too little land for too many people and climate change. We are going to tackle two specific problems concerning organic waste management and agriculture in the Maldives, we will describe these more detailed below.

What problems will we tackle?

90% of food consumed in the Maldives (United Nations Development Program) is imported, mostly from India or Sri Lanka. This is because of the limited amount of fertile soil (or soil at all!) in the Maldives. Importing these large amount of food leads to a lot of CO2 emission by shipping and makes the food much more expensive for the locals and resorts.

Also, there is a huge waste problem in the Maldives as there is very little space to get rid of the waste. There even is an island which is full of waste called trash island. Within the waste problem, people have a lot of difficulties with the disposal of organic waste. Most of the organic waste disposed by resorts, households or other larger entities is thrown into the ocean at night! Often this waste washes up to the shore which pollutes the beautiful white beaches which makes the Maldives famous.

What is our solution?

We want to find a sustainable and continuous solution for the problems above. To start with, we want to donate compost kits to resorts, schools, mosques, households etc. so they can reuse their organic waste by making compost of it. We already have suitable compost kits which are half sponsored by the NGO The Soneva Group. The communities or people using the compost kits can do either of two things with their produced compost. First, they can use the compost for their own garden to provide themselves or their clients with home-grown food. Secondly, they can donate the produced compost to us, we will eventually provide local farmers with compost so they can have more fertile soil to grow their crops. This circular process solves both the import problem and the organic waste problem to some extend! We work together with agriculture consultants, the city councils on the island, multiple NGO’s on the islands and the ministry of agriculture to achieve our goals.

Why do we need you?

To obtain the composting kit, due to the Soneva Group, we only need to pay half of the kits we buy! Therefore, we expect that we need €1400 to buy enough composting kits for the project. Furthermore, we need to travel within the Maldives to enlarge our range of farmers, resorts and households that we can reach. The more money we raise, the larger our range! Distances in the Maldives are big, for now we expect that we need at least €600 for travelling in between the islands and farms. Furthermore we need €1000 for buidling of our own composting kits. We need material like chicken wire, pallets, thermometers and other supplies. Lastly, we need €500 for transportation of the kits and other goods that we need such as a microscope. All together we need €3500 to reach our goal!

Please sponsor us so we can provide the Maldives with a composting system and so that we can reach as many farms and resorts as possible to make the Maldives sustainable!

Thank you!

Sustainable Soil Maldives

You can always contact us for more information by phone or email!

+31 6 11902539

Nicolaasvanzuylen@gmail.com

Who provides us with the project?

Resilient Island!

"We are Resilient Island. Nature and People are our most important stakeholders. Our dream is to push the boundaries of possibility in finding new solutions with societal and local impact. We thrive by maintaining a close relationship with our projects, seeing them grow, and creating space when project maturity is reached. We work with and for local communities and nature. This requires an intimate and creative approach for every project. We believe that this is the way to enable accessible and responsible food production globally. It means creating places where we and others can feel at home years later.

Resilient Island’s mission is to realize localized food production which is embedded in and embraced by local communities and achieves long-term success, resilience, and self-sufficiency for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Our ambition is to do this together with local partners and communities. This means respecting local values and traditions and building a community for a long sustainable future. This way, our projects are tailored to local circumstances and values, establishing shared responsibility and ownership.

By continuously reinvesting our profits in a better future and challenging our concepts we improve circularity and reduce our own social and environmental food footprint."

https://www.resilientisland.com/

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Newsletter - Project Update 1 (November 19, 2023)

20-11-2023 | 15:01 Our first weeks in Dear Donor, We want to begin by thanking everyone for supporting our project. With 90% of our target budget already reached, we are well on our way to achieving our goal. We would like to extend special thanks to Stichting Urgenda for being a significant pillar in our funding. They are an organization dedicated to innovation and sustainability, aiming to accelerate sustainability in the Netherlands by collaborating with companies, governments, social organizations, and individuals. More about them can be found at https://www.urgenda.nl/. For those who are not yet aware, we are writing this newsletter from the Maldives, where we've spent the last two weeks. Let us walk you through the activities we have participated in so far. Traveling and Malé Our first layover was only 2 hours, and back in September, we booked the tickets with extra insurance in case we missed the layover due to a delay. It turned into a sort of manifestation because our first flight was delayed exactly two hours, leaving us stranded in Istanbul. Fortunately, everything was well organized, and we all got hotel rooms and a transfer bus in Istanbul. They put us on the same flight the next day. Thom and Nico even had their own rooms. We spent a day sightseeing and continued our journey at night. None of us really minded the extra small excursion. After our night flight, we landed at 9 am local time in the capital city of Malé. We dropped our belongings at the accommodation and explored the city for a bit. During our time in the city, our priority was meeting with local stakeholders who could assist us and sourcing hardware for the composting kits we planned to build, along with enjoying some leisure activities. Here are the highlights of our time in Malé: Live&Learn The third photo showcases our meeting with Zameela and her colleagues from Live&Learn, an NGO dedicated to educating and mobilizing communities while creating supportive partnerships for a more sustainable future. They greatly assisted us in brainstorming ideas and establishing relevant networks for our project location. We plan to meet with them again later in the project. Hardware Stores We went through the entire city in search of the necessary hardware for the composting kits we planned to make ourselves. This included spades, chicken wire, wire cutters, pallets, thermometers, and tie wraps. After visiting several stores and compiling a price listing, we inquired if we could get similar materials for a comparable price in Addu, where our project would take place. This was essential since the distance between the capital city and Addu is approximately 500 kilometers. Through one of our contacts, we discovered it would be best to purchase the required items in Addu. Fun stuff In Malé, we visited the markets and had the wonderful idea to purchase freshly caught fish and grill them on a barbecue at the beach. The photos show us at the vegetable and fish markets, as well as next to the beach barbecue, where a local helped us set up the barbecue because it suddenly started to rain. The locals we met were incredibly hospitable; this guy assisted us in barbecuing for nearly two hours without asking for anything in return. First days in Addu-City After our days in the capital city of Malé, we flew to Addu-City, where we will be staying for the next two months. This island is the southernmost in the Maldives, approximately 535 kilometers from Malé, with a flight duration of about 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, our flight departed at 11:30 pm, so we couldn't enjoy the view due to the darkness. Upon arrival at our accommodation, we rested and planned for the upcoming week, scheduling a lot of meetings. Soneeva We first had an online meeting with Gordon Jackson, the waste manager for the Soneva resorts. He currently oversees operations for four resorts, three in the Maldives and one in Thailand. His primary objective is to minimize organic waste at the resorts and process it as effectively as possible. We have already had several online meetings with Gordon over the last few months, and he will be helping us with our composting project by delivering us 40 of his composting kits. Gordon informed us that we could get 10 of the kits soon, but they are now stuck in customs. They will ship to Malé and Zameela will help us ship the kits to Addu. The rest of the 30 kits do not have a clear delivery date yet. Equator Village In the photos, you'll see our meeting with Mohammed Waheed, the owner of Equator Village, one of the resorts known for its sustainability efforts, including maintaining gardens and producing compost. Mohammed Waheed gave us permission to test different composting kits on his property and offered assistance where needed. He also gave us a tour of the resort gardens, showcasing the produce they grow and the composting pile they maintain, using the compost for fertilization. Veshi Saafu We met with Fathmath from the NGO Veshi Saafu, translating to Clean Environment. She assisted us with contacts in Addu and provided ideas on promoting sustainability on the island. Additionally, she arranged a meeting with the island's council. Lastly, as you can see in one of the photos, her husband treated us to fresh coconuts and taught us how to open them—a delightful local experience. Later in the week, we met Fathmath's daughter-in-law, Suna, who collaborates with an Australian school offering internships for teachers in training. Our plan is to collaborate in delivering lectures on composting and sustainability. Agricultural College We visited the agricultural college in Addu, where Suharika showed us various crops and their small-scale compost production. We will also be trying both the composting methods here in the future, and they are interested in maintaining the composting process and informing us on the results. With their collaboration, we will also be building some small gardens here. Billabong High School Fathmath arranged a meeting with the principal of Billabong High School, where we toured the school and met with teachers and students. We plan to deliver lectures on composting and sustainability here in the near future. It's an international school. You see us in the photo in one of the kindergarten classes. First Composting Kit After visiting numerous hardware stores, we eventually found one offering most of the components we needed at a reasonable price. There, we purchased chicken wire, wire cutters, and tie wraps. Conveniently, Fathmath had pallets stored in a shed that we could use free of charge. We transported all the hardware to Equator Village and began constructing our first composting kit. Currently, we've built the frame and await precise information on how to fill the kit. Once we have that information, we'll need to purchase spades and thermometers to complete the first kits. It has been a week of extensive travel and activity, but we are beginning to settle into our accommodations for the coming months. We have a series of meetings scheduled with various stakeholders next week, and hopefully, we will soon receive the composting kits from Soneeva, enabling us to commence work. We'll keep you all updated! Cheers, Sterre, Thom, Nicolaas, and Ruth Fun fact: The local language of the Maldives has 12 different types of names for a coconut, describing the stage in the lifecycle of the fruit, like young, drinking fase, and eating fase. (https://bliss.mv/en/12-words-for-coconut/)