Akvo and the Social Web: In the need of clear fresh thinking for clear fresh water
Posted on by September 24, 2009 by anders.abrahamsson
There are currently one billion people living without access to clean water and almost two billion people lacking access to sanitation. In a sense, the ”water issue” is more urgent than climate change.
At the same time, taking another look at it, coming from outer space and looking upon the world, the problem seems to be paradoxical. Lack of water should not be a problem – our surface is covered by 70 percent of it. At the same time, to make it usable and drinkable for humans is lack of two things – desalinated fresh water and distribution with pipes.
When attending World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2009, I was confronted that there were so many ”boxes” in the fair space. Project after project, organization after organization – it seemed like alot of double- and triple job. And still the issues remain far from solved.
A breath of fresh air – or shall I say a sip of fresh water? – was the hangout and the thinking of the guys managing the Watercube.tv, the innovative startup Akvo. They sent live from the fair space, with interviews of keynotes, attendees, organization representatives and bypassers, giving a ”user’s voice” in the front seat directly to the web. Akvo has set up a web solution where field projects related to water and sanitation gets easier matched with funding partners and supportive organisations all over the world, currently with over hundred affiliated organizations.
Their innovative approach made the local community of Norrköping arranging the Twestival – the Twitter Festival – pick one of their projects supported in Tbilisi, Georgia, as a target for the charity fundraising. The social web made for social change, using a social software platform developed by Akvo, matchmaking directly peer to peer. If this was done more systematically, this would move us closer to the solution, rather than just recycling the reports of the problem.
Words produced should be transformed to action distributed, so more clean water can be consumed!
/Anders Abrahamsson
Anders is a serial sustainopreneur and has been the driving force in the conceptual development of Sustainopreneurship, and published its Wikipedia article in 2008. He has published a number of publications on this topic, and is currently authoring a popular book on subject, one blog post at a time. Founder of SLICE Services and Publishing.
