givelove about us

OUR TEAM

Patricia Arquette, Executive Director
Patricia has traveled to Haiti on a regular basis to oversee our work in Haiti. Her hands-on approach to ecological sanitation has inspired the best experts in the field to come work on our program in Haiti. Her passion for composting and improving health through sanitation has helped draw global attention to this Brown Revolution.

Rosetta Getty, Founder
Rosetta traveled to Haiti in March as part of our first fact-finding visit. Rosetta is a wife, mother of four, and fashion designer. She has devoted herself to fundraising for GiveLove and creating media opportunities for raising awareness about Haiti’s sanitation crisis, and its impact on children and public health.

Alisa Puga Keesey, Program Director
Alisa brings over 2O years of experience working in rural economic development and fair trade marketing to her work developing sanitation value chains in Haiti. As co-founder of COVOL Uganda, her organization worked with women’s groups to improve food security, and establish the first fair trade shea butter cooperatives in northern Uganda by providing technical support, training, and market linkages to high-value cosmetic markets worldwide. To help support the producers, she created two premium brands featuring Nilotica Shea Butter. Alisa holds a M. SCI. degree in International Agricultural Development from UC Davis, and a M.A. in Cultural Anthropology, from UC Santa Cruz.

Rodrigo Silva, Ecosan Warrior
Rodrigo has worked in Haiti since the earthquake on the clean-up effort, and to help establish GiveLove’s Green School, and Eco-san training programs. An experienced Eco-san practitioner, he has designed, built, and monitored composting systems and dry urinals for large music festivals in Portugal for over 30,000+ people. Rodrigo has been instrumental to GiveLove by building connections with Ecosan groups worldwide. His work as a trainer of trainers has been influenced by advance coursework in Permaculture Design, and Eco-village Design and Bio-construction. Rodrigo also completed eight years of military service as a sergeant in the Portuguese Army.

Franky Mejia Grullon, Project Logistics
Franky has been working with the GiveLove team since January 2010 and has been key to establishing our organization in Haiti. He is currently helping to manage our construction projects. He lives in the Dominican Republic where he manages El Fuego del Sol Ecotourism Center & Santana Verde Eco-village in Higuey. Franky has a working farm in the DR and appreciates the value in teaching people how to compost so they can reduce dependence on chemical fertilizers.

Christopher Robertson, Housing Project Architect
Christopher is the principal of Robertson Design. He grew up in Houston and earned his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1998, he completed a residency in Genova, Italy, with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano. Upon graduation, Robertson formed KRDB (Krager Robertson Design-Build) in Austin, Texas. He received the AIA Austin Firm Achievement Award, as well as two Citations of Honor. In 2004, Robertson moved to Houston in order to oversee the construction of the Main Street residence. Christopher has traveled to Haiti on several occasions since the earthquake to plan and oversee the GiveLove housing project.

Richmond Arquette, Volunteer & Builder
Richmond Arquette is an actor and writer in Los Angeles. He serves on the boards of GiveLove, and GiveLove's Haitian organization. Richmond has visited Haiti three times to work on our projects. Among the many things he has done there, he oversaw the completion of the prototypes for our shipping container homes, and lived in one for a month to test the feasibility of the unit, finding it comfortable for future inhabitants.

Cosmo Pfeil, Founder of One-Truck, Inc.
Cosmo has over eight years of experience working in disaster relief. He has worked on the Gulf Coast after Katrina, in Rwanda, and most recently in South Dakota with the Lakota Sioux building a community greenhouse. After forming One Truck, Inc. (www.one-truck.org), Cosmo departed for Haiti immediately after the earthquake to assist GiveLove in procuring materials, running logistics for our sanitation project, and the management of the Tapis Verte, Cité Soleil IDP camp. He is now working with the Sanitation Team on a pilot Ecosan project in Tilory near the Domincan Republic border.

SANITATION TEAM ADVISORS
Joseph Jenkins is internationally known for authoring the Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, which has been sold worldwide and published in foreign editions on four continents. He has been a compost practitioner since 1975 and has grown his family’s food with humanure compost for the past 31 years. Jenkins can be reached via his web site at humanurehandbook.com where videos, instructions and the complete Humanure Handbook can be accessed free of charge. Joe led our Sanitation Team in May 2010 and helped establish our first successful humanure pilot project.

Hamish Skermer has a degree in Environmental Chemistry. He formed Natural Event in 2000 and has delivered original composting solutions to events throughout Australia and EU. Natural Event composting toilets have been used over three million times by up to 500,000 people. Hamish has been a key advisor to our program and is also involved in projects in Fiji, Cook Islands, Australian desert communities, and partnerships with eco-san organizations in US, Norway, and the UK. Natural Event's vision is "Changing the world from the bottom up!”

Andrew Larsen is currently working on a M. SCI. degree in Ecological Sanitation at the NorwegianUniversity of Life Sciences. Andrew traveled to Haiti immediately after the earthquake to help with clean-up work in Port-au-Prince. He was part of the original Sanitation Team that established the Humanure Pilot Project in May, and has been a key advisor for all of our eco-sanitation projects.

David Stieger is a graduate Student at Earth University in Costa Rica where he is studying sustainable agriculture, community development and eco-sanitation. David speaks five languages and is committed to empowering communities through training and sharing knowledge about appropriate technology. He worked with GiveLove in Haiti for four months in 2010, and helped to design our training materials and workshops.

Mike Cloutier is trained as an electrical engineer with a Master’s degree in renewable energy systems with which he worked on projects in Haiti, Tanzania, and Nigeria. More recently he has been a permaculturalist and organic farmer working on farms and projects all over the world, but most significantly in New Zealand, Uganda, and Canada. He came to GiveLove with his experience in composting and composting toilets to work with the eco-san group designing and installing composting toilets.

Kaia Bing is a student at the University of Life Sciences in Norway where she is now finishing a B.A. degree in Environment and Natural Resources with an emphasis on limnology. Her thesis research examines drinking water supply in post-earthquake Haiti. She will begin a Master's degree program in Sustainable Water and Sanitation in 2012. Kaia worked with our team in January 2010 on site planning for several of our projects, and was part of our field research team.