Patricia Arquette, Executive Director
Patricia Arquette founded GiveLove in January 2010 after the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Her hands-on approach to ecological sanitation has inspired the best experts in the field to work on our programs. Patricia’s interest in promoting compost sanitation and improving public health is motivated by the desire to protect water resources, restore soil fertility, and create more resilient communities. Most recently, Patricia spent over a month at Standing Rock to help build over 100 compost toilets.

Rosetta Getty, Co-founder
Rosetta traveled to Haiti in March 2010 to help raise funds for the organization's relief efforts. As a mother of four children, she supports GiveLove by creating opportunities for raising awareness about the global sanitation crisis, and its impact on child mortality and public health. Rosetta currently serves on our Board of Directors.

Alisa Puga Keesey, Program Director
Alisa brings over 25 years of experience as a program officer to the program design and applied research that ground GiveLove's EcoSan programs. As co-founder of COVOL, she worked with women’s groups and farmers to improve food security, increase household income, and establish the first fair trade shea butter cooperatives in northern Uganda. Alisa holds a B.A. in International Relations from San Francisco State University, a M. SCI. in International Agricultural Development from University of California, Davis, and a M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She's excited to collaborate with a diverse group of organizations to link EcoSan programs with holistic programming that integrates livelihoods, sustainable land use, food security, and local resiliency in the context of climate change.

Samuel Autran Dorado E Souza, Global Research & Training Coordinator
Sam joined our international team in February 2016. He has led training programs for GiveLove in Nicaragua, Uganda, Colombia and Kenya, and is researching training methodologies and best practices on compost sanitation systems for rural households and schools. Sam is a PhD candidate in Environmental Education at the Federal University of Rio Grande (Brazil). He also holds a Masters certificate in Development Practice from a joint program between the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and the Earth Institute at Columbia University (New York). Working as a “Lone Wolf” and compost activist, Sam piloted and self-financed several of his own sanitation projects in Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, and Ethiopia. Sam brings diverse skills and experience to our team with knowledge of sustainable development, rainwater collection and harvesting, urban agriculture, agroforestry and participatory development.

Richmond Arquette, Volunteer
Richmond is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles. Richmond played a key role in launching the Haiti relief effort and spent several months in the field managing our projects in 2010. Currently he serves on GiveLove’s Board of Directors.

Lucho Jean, Country Director Haiti & Lead Trainer
Lucho worked with GiveLove as Country Director from 2010 to 2014. He has worked to promote compost sanitation in Haiti in many different contexts and challenging environments. Lucho has helped dozens of NGOs design toilets and compost sites, and conducted hundreds of hours of technical trainings. He has spent years working with ordinary Haitians to build local capacity and create highly skilled compost technicians to manage sanitation systems. In September 2012, Lucho and the Santo trainers scaled a compost toilet project to 300 households with Habitat for Humanity in Leogane — one of the largest community-managed sanitation projects in the world. In May 2015, Lucho joined GiveLove, BlueEnergy and Sweet Progress for a 45-day training to launch the Nicaragua EcoSan program.

Rodrigo Silva, Sanitation Expert & EcoSan Trainer
Rodrigo travelled to Haiti after the earthquake to help with the relief effort. He joined GiveLove to work on our first pilot, and launched the first Green School site. Over the past decade, Rodrigo has designed, built, and managed composting systems and dry urinals for large music festivals and Eco-lodges in Portugal – pioneering systems for upscale “Glamping.” His approach to building systems has been influenced by advance coursework in permaculture, Eco-village design, and bio-construction. Rodrigo joined the international Go-team in 2015 to launch the Nicaragua program, and will spearhead other international trainings as they come our way.

Steffan Thimmes, Training Coordinator
Steffan joined our team in 2014. Over the past 20 years, Steffan's passion for alternative, off-grid living has helped him acquire a an impressive range of skills in sustainable and low-impact building methods; including his own experiments with composting toilets and EcoSan. Steffan has years of professional experience as a builder and journeyman plumber which strengthen his role as an EcoSan trainer. He especially enjoys fieldwork and creating appropriate toilet designs and structures using local and native building techniques and materials. Without a doubt, Steffan is GiveLove's most popular team member, and our partners always ask to spend more time with him.

Robbie Cavolina - Videographer and Documentarian
Robbie is an award winning director, writer and editor from Los Angeles best known for his film, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer. Robbie has worked with GiveLove since 2010 and has donated his time to manage thousands of photos and video clips. He came to Haiti in 2014 to document the Santo project and interview our compost technicians. Robbie will work with GiveLove to develop videos and other content for our online training portals.

Benar Geer — Videographer and Documentarian
Benar is a super-human who cares about people and the earth. He has been a close collaborator with GiveLove since 2010. His photos and films are powerful and inspirational training tools for people to learn about composting and water scarcity.

SANITATION ADVISORS

Joseph Jenkins — Author, HUMANURE HANDBOOK Joe is internationally known for authoring the Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure. He has been a compost practitioner since 1975 and has grown his family’s food with humanure compost for the past 36 years. Jenkins can be reached via his website at: humanurehandbook.com where videos, resources, and the Humanure Handbook can be downloaded free of charge. Joe worked with GiveLove to establish the first humanure pilot project in Haiti. He has made several visits as a project consultant and researcher. In 2014, he reviewed our data for the Santo Case Study (available on the Haiti – Santo page). Joe promotes compost sanitation at international conferences where he presents field data on humanure systems to teach and inspire others.

Hamish Skermer — Founder, Natural Event Hamish Skermer has been a key member of our technical team and helped established our first pilot project in Haiti. Hamish founded Natural Event in 2000, and his company has delivered original composting solutions to music festivals and large-scale events throughout Australia and the EU. Natural Event’s composting toilets have been used millions of times by over 700,000 people. In 2014, Natural Event scaled to over 1000 compost toilets at the Glastonbury Festival. In addition to his work with GiveLove, he has worked on humanitarian projects in Fiji, the Cook Islands, Australian desert communities, and in partnership with organizations in the U.S., Norway, and the UK. Hamish holds a degree in Environmental Chemistry. In 2015, Natural Event co-funded the launch of GiveLove’s Nicaragua country program.

NICARAGUA TEAM

Karen Meza is a native Nicaraguan who started community development work as a volunteer at the age of sixteen with the group Wisconsin-Nicaragua Partners. She received the prestigious “Spirit of Service to Volunteerism” award by the Partners of the Americas for her workshops promoting education and reading skills for children. Karen works with Sweet Progress as their Pacific-region EcoSan coordinator, and has been key to the success of their first household pilot. She brings incredible energy and knowledge to her community development work promoting improved sanitation, recycling, job creation, and reforestation efforts.

Jonathan Adán Almendarez Gómez works with Sweet Progress as an EcoSan skills trainer and construction designer. Jonathan has contributed unique design innovations to the Loveable-loo and continues to find way to make affordable compost toilets and superstructures. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin’s ESL program, and has years of experience working for Wisconsin Nicaragua Partners on many diverse projects. Jonathan has collaborated on many projects with other NGOs utilizing his design skills to create new products out of recycled cardboard.

THE ECOSANEADORAS

Margarita Eusebia Lumbi Figueroa lived in the community of Villa Japon, and was one of the first volunteers to train with Sweet Progress. Margarita passed away in 2016 due to complications during her pregnancy.

Janet Valle Ramirez is an active community leader in Villa Japon. In May 2015 she participated in the first EcoSan Training organized by Sweet Progress. As a result of her participation she received one of the first Ecobaños and compost piles in the community, because her family did not have a proper latrine.

Cesia Judith Robles Gaitan is finishing her high school studies and working with Sweet Progress. She joined the EcoSan program as youth leader and volunteer who has great enthusiasm for supporting development programs that provide benefits for the local communities. She is president of the Rainbow Group (of youth leaders) and a highly skilled compost technician who teaches families in her community how to manage compost piles. Her dream is to get a degree in International Relations with an emphasis on human rights and development in order to support marginalized people.

Masiel del Carmen Ruiz Rivas is a high school student that belongs to a group of young volunteers called Rainbow, which are focused on social work to help their communities. Masiel’s enterprising, charismatic and other social skills help her shine in her work with Sweet Progress.

Noelia Tatiana Gadea came to the project after receiving a compost toilet. After a month-long training she joined the Sweet Progress team because she personally benefitted from having a compost toilet and wanted to share her experience with others. She joined Sweet Progress to work in the community to improve sanitation without any hesitation.

INDIA ECOSAN TEAM – Centurion University

Annapurna Pandey is a professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and from the state of Orissa. She worked for over two years to organize GiveLove’s first trip to India and rallied a team of senior faculty at Centurion University to support our visit and trainings. Annapurna’s dream is to develop dignified, clean and safe sanitation systems that are appropriate for India, and to harness the power of composting to make organic fertilizer. She is deeply committed to increasing economic opportunities for marginalized ethnic groups and communities.

Vishal Kumar Singh holds a Bachelor’s of Technology in Civil Engineering from CUTM. He is currently working as a Project Executive at M.S. Swaminathan School of Agriculture. Vishal leads GiveLove’s EcoSan Program in the position of Program Director. He joined our project to support the Green India Initiative, and to develop new ways to save water and make organic fertilizer.

Ashish Modi holds a Bachelor’s of Technology from Centurion and is working as a Project Executive in the Agriculture Department. He joined GiveLove as one of our lead trainers because he found the concept of humanure composting innovative, and “good for the world and the environment.”

Pradip Kumar Panda is the Administrator of the Centurion Public School. He received his M.A. L.L. B. from Utkal University in Odisha. Pradip believes that compost sanitation can be very useful for rural India where people are facing problems in attaining water for daily use.

Prameela Yadav is student in the Agriculture Departmen. She has been working with the EcoSan project from its launch in July 2015 by assisting the trainings, field visits, gender analysis, and promoting the use of the compost toilets. Prameela is excited to promote dry toilets in India because it is a radical new concept useful for improving public health and organic agriculture. She speaks Telugu, English and Hindi fluently, and she is able to converse in local hill tribe dialects as well.

N.Chandra Leel is studying to receive a B.A. from CUTM. Chandra is working on community development and conducting household surveys on sanitation and water issues, livelihoods, and gender analysis. She completed the first household surveys for our project in July 2015.

Special thanks to: Julia Molnar, Rosetta & Balthazar Getty, David Stade, Richmond Arquette, David Arquette, Rosanna Arquette, Todd Morgan, Cortney Cox, Sean Penn, JP/HRO, Cosmo Pheil, Christopher Robertson, Dan Panko, Caroline Sada, John Engle and Haiti Partners, Sarita Russafova Wolf, Joey Adler and OneXOne, Emilie Golub, Cathy Carplener, Sam Bloch, Communitere International, Habitat for Humanity, Bobby Bukowski, Shanit and Sam Schwartz, Andrew Larsen, David Steiger, Mike Cloutier, Kate Rustemeyer, Christian Preguerman, Rachel Tanzer, Taylor Choi, Frankie Mejia, Pierre-Marie Le Conte, Monika Nowacka, Suna Said, Pradip and Soma Biswas, Dr. Mukti Kanta Mishra, Harshvardhan Saraf, Trang Cao, Joan Lintz-Thompson, Robbie Cavolina, Nincent Cosgrove, LT. Col. Brian Woolworth, Karla Williams, Anne Clennett, Mitch Haddad, Sabrina Kerin, BlueEnergy, Joshua Briemberg, Todd and Kari Wagner, Cash Sirois, Charlie Woo, CHIDEO, Ron Baldwin, and Sara Weinstein.