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Stunningly simple

The ColaLife idea starts with two quite startling facts: 1) in developing countries, 1 in 5 children die before their fifth birthday from simple causes such as dehydration from diarrhoea, that’s 4 a minute in Africa alone, or 5,500 a day and 2) you can buy a Coca-Cola virtually anywhere, even in developing countries. The idea is that we use the amazing Coca-Cola distribution channels to get simple medicines, like Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS), out to the places where they would save children’s lives.

This is the story of how one person, using the convening power of the internet, can turn the head of the world’s biggest global brands – and engage them.

Eddie Mair of Radio 4’s iPM programme described the ColaLife idea as “stunningly simple” which of course it is. The idea first came to me when I was working for the British aid programme in NE Zambia in 1988. Then, I had 3 children under age of 5. But the only form of communications infrastructure we had in Zambia back then was a telex machine. There was no phone, no fax and of course no internet. One exchange by snail mail took 3 weeks – if the person you were writing to replied on the day they received your letter. Needless to say I didn’t make much progress with the idea.

Then, this year, prompted by the Business Call to Action event in London in May hosted by Gordon Brown, I decide to have another go, this time using the convening power of the internet. The progress made has been amazing. It started with a Facebook Group (which now has 7,700+ members – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18947780476). I posted the story on the BBC’s iPM blog and they picked it up and got a nibble from Coca-Cola. We followed this up as the Facebook Group grew and I was invited by Coca-Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations to Brussels to discuss the idea in more detail. At this meeting I got a commitment from Coca-Cola to include this idea into the research that they were about to do into their distribution network in Tanzania.

In November this year I was invited by Coca-Cola to a stakeholder meeting in Dar-es-Salam to discuss the idea further. I am now working on engaging a global Non Government Organisation (NGO) to work with Coca-Cola to trial the idea. The objective now is to get properly monitored trials underway in the New Year.

To follow my campaign visit http://www.colalife.org

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