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