Akvo campaigns

Raise more money. Increase publicity. Show your impact.

Start your own campaign

If you want to run a campaign that funds specific development projects that you can point to on a map, you’re in the right place. We simplify the process of dealing with the support and field teams you want to help, so you can focus on promotion. Because every Akvo project is online, with updates direct from the field, you can share the story with supporters as it happens. To date, we’ve helped many levels of campaign from groups of friends to global events.

Your supporters can follow project updates and embed them into their own sites so everyone knows how much has been achieved and what remains to be done. Supporters can view progress as it happens and donate online. QR tags let you directly link products to results.

Join an existing campaign

Get on board one of the existing campaigns that use Akvo to support local teams transforming conditions in their communities. Many are looking for donors or supporters to help with promotion, fundraising or local events. Here we showcase a few examples.

See some product campaigns ▶
See some public fundraising campaigns ▶

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Product campaigns

Dutch restaurant chain sells water, funds projects

Dutch restaurant chain Le Connaisseur faced price rises for its bottled water, so its management decided to switch to a more ethical approach. By switching to Earth Water, which is committed to fund water projects with profits, it was able to choose a project to support in the Akvo Marketplace.

For a promotion period a full 50 cents from every €2.45 sale went to provide safe drinking water to 5,000 people in Ethiopia. An Akvo widget on the Le Connaisseur website showcased the project online. Read the story.

Bags for water

Textile company ViaDesign.org sells bags made by vulnerable women receiving training and support from the Mhalar Aran Trust in Tamil Nadu, India.

A local campaigner in Sweden, Concerts for Change, is reselling the bags in Stockholm at music events, with €10 from each €20 bag sold going to a safe drinking water project covering three villages in Eastern India. Each bag sold features a Quick Response (QR) tag attached as a label, so people can use a mobile phone to see the project they’re funding online.

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Public fundraising campaigns

Live Earth Run for Water, powered by Akvo

Live Earth is a Los Angeles-based campaigner that works to harness the power of global media and entertainment to raise awareness on key environmental issues. In 2009 it decided to partner with Akvo to bring a network of global water projects online to be supported by the Live Earth Run for Water, which happened in more than 150 countries in April 2010.

Akvo helped Live Earth identify high quality projects in various countries and worked with its existing partners to bring all their projects online. With Akvo’s support, Live Earth was able to feature a global online project network for a fraction of the usual cost.

Cycle for water

Students Joost Notenboom & Michiel Roodenburg are cycling the length of the Americas, raising money for water projects in Latin America as they go. Their colossal 30,000km trip from the top of Alaska to the tip of Argentina is entirely on bamboo bicycles, and they’re stopping en route at schools and other organisations to raise awareness about the global water crisis.

Akvo Marketplace enabled them to choose projects in the locations they preferred, and widgets made it easy to embed the projects on their website. Follow their adventures, see the impact of their fundraising and make a donation at www.cycleforwater.com.

Walking for Water

Walking for Water is an inspirational and rapidly expanding multi-million Euro annual campaign to get children focused on, and engaged in, the global water crisis. Children aged 10-13 walk 6km carrying six litres of water in a backpack, highlighting the average distance people must carry water every day. While learning about water and sanitation issues, they raise money from friends and family to fund real development projects which they can then follow online.

An easy, out of the box concept, it lets organisations partner with young people in their community to make a visible difference in some of the world’s poorest places. In 2011, it raised over €1 million when more than 25,000 schoolchildren took part.

See the campaign online at www.walkingforwater.eu.

Warhammer for water

Warhammer is a cult tabletop wargame. Two Warhammer enthusiasts were sponsored to get a high ranking in the Dutch national championships of the popular game. Finishing 10th out of 34 professional teams, they raised €700 for a project in Ethiopia providing safe water and empowering women.

Givashit: festival toilets fund water and sanitation projects

Why shouldn’t each toilet at a festival be viewed as an opportunity to inspire users to do something positive? For the past three years, hundreds of thousands of festival goers in the Netherlands have got involved in water projects around the world just by going to the toilet. Specially-designed, cool-looking lavatory blocks showcasing projects through posters and QR technology have been entertaining and informing users at the national De Parade theatre festival in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague. Many were inspired to make a donation, raising over €40,000 in 2010.