1bn people lack clean water

Greenbang’s mate, Mark Charmer, is working on a project on giving sanitation and water to some of the poorer parts of the world.

Here’s what his organisation, AKVO, is doing.

“Over one billion of the world’s poorest people lack clean water or basic sanitation,” explains Akvo founder Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson, a Swedish social entrepreneur. “Our aim is to speed up the pace of improvement, to help get this number down by half by 2015, in line with the Millennium Development Goals the world committed to but is not yet close to achieving.”

Akvo is a pioneering internet project to improve the way the world’s knowledge about water and sanitation is organised and used.

Founder Thomas Bjelkeman wanted to create an internet foundation that would collate knowledge and spark new capabilities and connections, inspired by projects such as Wikipedia and Ebay. He found his first financial backers in the Netherlands.

A year later, Akvo launched to the water development community, has won over technologists in Silicon Valley and has this month become a big hit in India, where Prince Willem-Alexander, an enthusiastic supporter and chair of the UN’s advisory board on water and sanitation, is expected to highlight the project during this month’s Dutch royal state visit.