Can Coca Cola save children’s lives?

Dear Annie

I was so delighted - I had to stop the car! I am trying to get Coca Cola to use their amazing distribution network in developing countries to distribute rehydration salts. Your comment inspired me to set up a facebook to gather people around this idea. For a week or so the group has been growing by about 2-3 per hour. Today it has really taken off and is growing at about 15 per hour.
You can read the full story of the campaign here: www.simonberry.net.

The text above is part of the letter Simon Berry wrote to Annie Lennox. Actually it tells te story of this amazing project.

Twenty years ago Simon Berry was a development worker in North Zambia, conscious that while he could buy a bottle of Coke anywhere, children were dying through inadequate distribution of simple medical treatments. In many cases they simply needed rehydration salts. Wouldn’t it be possible to reach an agreement by which Coca Cola used a small part of its superior distribution capacity to get the medicine to children? As Simon says:

"The idea came to me - but I had no mechanism for sharing it with people. At least, I did have mechanisms, but they were one to one mechanisms, and the thing never got any traction. But now, with the whole Web 2.0 thing, one person can have an idea, and gather other people around that idea, very, very easily.”

Since the launch of the campaign and due to the power of a Facebook group, Simon was invited by Salvatore Gabola, Coca-Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations, to a meeting to discuss the idea further at Coca-Cola’s European HQ in Brussels. To date, the campaign’s Facebook group has reached over 3,670 members since its inception on 18 May 2008.

The campaign was nominated for the NewStatesman’s New Media Award in June and showcased at London’s 2gether08 festival on 3rd July. It was also featured on BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme in May and July, on the BBC World Service on 13 July and published online by leading U.S sustainability weblog Inhabitat.com on 29th July.
Simon explains: “Before the Facebook group I was getting nowhere at all. The group has changed everything and is the reason we’ve made such rapid progress …Continuing support for the idea is vital if we are to turn this idea into a reality and actually save some lives.”

Research and development of the campaign continues to evolve. The next objective is to get an international NGO to engage with the campaign. Meanwhile research is underway in East African into Coca-Cola’s distribution system and the feasibility of the idea is being investigated and reported in Simon’s blog.

To find out more information and to follow the story, visit www.SimonBerry.net.
Join the Facebook group.

Update 5/08: Since yesterday http://www.colalife.org is online. Great website with all the info about this amazing initiative.

Thanks to Kate Andrews for pointing me to this great campaign.

Below a interview David Wilcox did with Simon Berry.

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Comments

Thanks very much for bringing this to the attention of your readers - much appreciated.

This is a numbers game! We’ve made amazing progress since we set up the Facebook group. Before that it was difficult to get anybody’s attention.

So. If you’re reading this and want help please join the group and consider inviting your friends:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18947780476

We could make a real difference here.

Thanks

Simon

There is a missing piece in this story. Why are the kids suffering for diarrhoea? Because they lack access to clean drinking water. Coca Cola regularly extracts million liters of water in many areas of the world resulting in severe water shortages for tens of thousands of people and communities. Growing demand for water by industry leads to serious over-exploitaion with less and less water available for consumers and farmers.

Now, after years of protests and grassroots movement, the company is trying to clean its image pouring some money into the “water issue”. They even declared the effort to become Water Neutral, even if the concept of balancing water use is not well defined like the carbon one. I wish the posts on this website could be more aware about “greenwashing” and at least give the right prospective to important topic like this, expecially involving big corporations with loads of money to spend on communication.

I also suggest to take a look and maybe make a post titled:  “Can Coca Cola save unionist’s lives?” talking about the Killer Coke campaign: http://www.killercoke.org/index.htm#item1 Mark Thomas wrote a wonderful reportage from Colombia on the Guardian: “To Die For: Being a trade union organiser in bottling plants used by Coca-Cola in Colombia is a dangerous business - they are prime targets for death squads. Can Coke be held responsible? Mark Thomas follows the trail from Bogotá to New York.

@Carla Thanks, very important to think about that. Did you confrontate colalife with this?

@Marc - i wrote here because im concerned about the fact that people covering issues on social and non profit communication sometimes have a kind of naive look when dealing with communication strategies and dont dig a bit more about the real impact of these campaigns compared with the companies’ social and enviromental impact in their everyday business. Coca cola doesnt produce only coke, The Coca-Cola Company is also one of the world’s leading producers of bottled water. Water, together with other common pool goods like genetic codes, clean air, local knowledge, and the like, is rapidly becoming part of new accumulation strategies and by the year 2050, some 4 billion people will be facing severe water shortages. In the meanwhile coca cola keeps fighting to have access to it -> http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/02/2379981.htm

@Carla
Thanks for your posts here. ColaLife is very aware and concerned about the issues you mention. In fact there are plenty of posts/discussions about this on the ColaLife Facebook Group. It is really important that people like you, Mark Thomas etc keep bringing this stuff to our attention so that powerful multi-nationals don’t walk all over us. This is an important on-going process and, as you say, does change behaviour (albeit slowly).

Meanwhile, ColaLife is seeking to bring the skills of people concerned about child mortality together with the skills of the people who manage to get Coca-Cola to all corners of the World (which includes the local entrepreneur making a living distributing Coca-Cola on a bicycle) to try and solve a problem that no single entity has been able to solve to date. A situation which is quite shameful and reflects very badly on us all, whoever we happen to work for.

Support for ColaLife is support to help save children’s lives. Support for ColaLife is not support for Coca-Cola. There would be nothing inconsistent about supporting ColaLife while campaigning on Coca-Cola’s water usage. They are different campaigns with different objectives.

@Simon Thaanx Simon for your answer. My posts were not done to prevent someone to support ColaLife but to understand that we’ve come to a certain level of emergency with water that Coca Cola business doesnt have a future without fighting to have access on public water. I’m pretty sick to see the hypocrisy of corporations around issues of Corporate Social Responsability&C;but at least when you see British Petroleum doing advertising about becoming green there is the possibility that they will abandon oil for renewable energies. But with water there is no chance of finding a substitute. To keep the Cola business going, the company needs to take it from somewhere, in large quantities.

I suggest to watch this movie: http://flowthefilm.com/trailer
It focuses mostly on developing nations and the corporate takeover of water systems in those countries

NOW let’s do a simple sequence of cause and effect:
Not access to clean water produces diahrrea, diahrrea produces dehydration, dehydration produces death in kids.
SO im glad ColaLife campaign helps kids survive diahrrea.
BUT access to clean water would stop the problem before it even starts.
Why would you let kids getting sick with diahrrea, even if you can cure them?

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