Hope-in-a-Bottle builds 17 classrooms

MANILA, Philippines - Here is one fledgling company that has built 17 public school classrooms by selling bottled water in the past two years alone.

Friends of Hope does not solicit funds for its advocacy, realizing that “donor fatigue” -- since it is basically the same people and corporations that are approached for money by everybody else – is a limiting factor and won’t raise enough to build enough.

Instead it runs its business like a private enterprise and pours all its profits after expenses into helping meet the country’s classroom backlog.

“To build more classrooms, we need to sell more water. To do this, we must get more partners to carry our product,” said Nanette Medved-Po, Hope’s founder.

Hope in a Bottle is sold in about 70 cooperating establishments including 7-11, Starbucks, and Seda Hotels. Since it was put up in March 2012, it has sold about 2.5 million bottles, she said.

Noey Lopez, chief operating officer of Starbucks, said Hope in a Bottle is currently carried in about half of his network of coffee shops.

“Starbucks, wherever it is, has a culture of helping. Hope in a Bottle met our criteria as far as giving back to the community. When they passed our facilities and product quality audit we knew that we could work together,” Lopez said.

“We are not doing charity. We are investing in the country. We are trying to help where we believe we can and should,” said Medved-Po.

Medved-Po said she took inspiration from celebrity philanthropists like U2 frontman Bono and Hollywood great Paul Newman.

From them, she learned that harnessing the expertise of private corporations in solving development problems “could lead to so much.”