1. ONE WATER PROJECT
Enterprise Week Competition
Social Enterprise Day
BACKGROUND
Over a billion people worldwide live without easy access to clean water. Two million of them die every year.
And, for many of the others, getting water involves a walk of up to five hours a day. Children who do this
have no time to go to school, or learn a trade, or set up a business. This keeps them in a cycle of poverty.
One Water was set up to solve this problem. A social enterprise that sells water in the developed world,
One Water uses 100% of its profits to build ‘PlayPumps’ in Africa. These are playground roundabouts
attached to water pumps – so when children play, the equipment pumps water from the ground into a giant
tank. Children can go to school, play during their lunch break, and still take home enough clean water for
their families.
CONCEPT
This year, One Water and Make Your Mark have teamed up to launch the One Water Project for
schools in the UK (and possibly worldwide) for the inaugural Global Entrepreneurship Week. It’s
simple. Teams of schoolchildren (aged 14-19) will be given bottles of One Water and just one month
in which to sell as many bottles as possible, in as innovative a way as possible. They could get them
signed by a celebrity, or turn the bottle label into a piece of artwork, or sell them at school or at their
parent’s workplace. The idea is to use all of their creativity and enterprise skills to sell One Water.
After repaying the original cost of the water, what they do with the profit is up to them. They can
keep it, donate it to One Water, or even use it to pursue another idea.
Schools will be encouraged to sign up in September and bottles of water will be delivered to students
for Social Enterprise Day (Thursday November 20, 2008) during Enterprise Week and Global
Entrepreneurship Week.
Schools win in five ways:
1. Students get valuable entrepreneurial experience in running a business
2. Ideally, students make a charitable donation to fund water pumps in Africa
3. Students and schools keep the other half of the profits they make and will be
encouraged to use them to create a sustainable social business
4. Students can make international connections, either via a dedicated website or
through a school twinning programme
5. The most innovative team in each country will win a prize: a trip to Africa on World
Water Day (22 March 2009) to see their pumps in action.
TO GET INVOLVED
Email chris@makeyourmark.org.uk
See the One Water website – www.onedifference.org
See the Make Your Mark website – www.makeyourmark.org.uk