Quenching The World's Thirst

Published on by in Non Profit

Quenching The World's Thirst

Edwin Broni-Mensah’s mission to provide clean water to Africa’s poorest villages one bottle at a time.

Edwin got the idea for GiveMeTap, a “people-powered movement to hydrate the world” after a coming-of-age moment.

He recalls: “I was 24 and I was thinking about what I wanted to do [with my life]. For me, being 25 was the definitive age for a man. By that point, if you hadn’t got certain things in your life, you probably would never have it. I started learning more about my spirituality and what it meant to be a man, and most importantly, taking a greater interest in my fitness. I
had nine months until I was turning 25 and the aim was to get that six-pack going really quickly.”

The young entrepreneur, who already had two businesses under his belt at the time, stumbled upon a YouTube video promoting the benefits of the P90X workout programme, which claimed to “transform your body from regular to ripped in 90 days”.

“P90X centres heavily on water consumption and I decided to stick to its strict diet. I started walking around campus going to and from class with a water bottle. I would ask cafés and restaurants to give me some water and they would just deny me and I didn’t get that.

“We have some of the best water in the world here, but we’re told to buy it out of plastic water bottles. And there are people around the world who have no choice but to drink heavily-polluted water. That really got me thinking. I have this problem-solving ability.

How can I provide something that would help both sets of people? That’s how the company was born,” he explains.

By purchasing a GiveMeTap bottle, customers – currently in the UK and San Francisco (though Edwin has plans for worldwide domination) – can enjoy free water refills at participating cafés and shops. Each purchase helps to provide another person in Africa with access to clean drinking water through the development of sustainable water projects.

Collectively, there are 850 outlets involved in the GiveMeTap scheme, “about 300 in London exclusively, almost 250 in San Francisco and the rest scattered around England,” he adds.

“The reception has been amazing. We’ve now won 20 different business awards (including the Most 20 different business awards (including the Most Sustainable Business Idea from Virgin Money UK), we’ve sold thousands of water bottles and helped over 12,000 people in communities in Ghana, Malawi and Namibia to get access to clean drinking water for life.

“It’s been amazing for me to go back near my home in the upper west region where my dad was brought up and provide them with clean water. To speak to community members and to see first-hand how important this scheme is for them motivates me. When I came back to the UK, I had more impetus to rapidly grow the business.”

For GiveMeTap, Edwin shunned the traditional model of company formation and dived straight in. “When I had the idea, I told myself I was going to execute it straight away. I said, ‘I’m just going to buy bottles from my manufacturer, go to the market and try and recruit cafés’. I promised myself that I would not spend any time writing a plan,” he recalls.

“That was the fi rst time I decided to do that. It’s easy to get caught up in ‘paralysis by analysis’ where you’re almost treating it like an academic exercise. I used to be a maths tutor at university so I had some money set aside so I could buy my first load of 500 bottles. I began selling them as soon as I got them.”

It’s taken Broni-Mensah four-and-a-half years to get to this point, “two-and-a-half of those years spent doing it part-time while I finished my PhD and working to raise money for the company and then the last two years I’ve been running it full time.”

He now spends his time between London and America making good on plans to expand the company to a global market.
At the time of our interview, the 30-year-old was boarding a plane heading to New York where he planned to meet with one of the biggest water charities in North America.

“We look to our charity partners so they can tell us where the greatest need is. And through them telling us where the greatest need is, that’s where we know where to build.”

Source: The Voice

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