Ethos Water founder speaks about ventures during the last decade

Peter Thum, founder of Ethos Water and the nonprofit organization Giving Water, spoke at the UCF on Tuesday about his ventures during the past 10 years. This event was organized by UCF's Global Perspectives Office.

In 2001, while working for McKinsey & Company, he got a call to work on a merger in South Africa. During that trip, he got a first-hand look at the poverty plaguing Africa. He said that he saw many women and children working an extra 3-to-6 hours a day to collect water.

"Literally millions of hours of unnecessary labor," he said.

Inspired by what he had seen, he left his job at McKinsey & Company to pursue his new dream: to sell water with the mission of helping children around the world get clean water and raise awareness about the world water crisis. The only problem was that no one was interested.

In order to market his idea, Thum went to a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference where he met Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Omidyar, interested in the mission, decided to make an investment in the company. Through Omidyar, Thum met Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. Schultz and the rest of the Starbucks executives were so impressed they decided to buy the Ethos Water company.

At first, Thum was reluctant because he feared Starbucks would change the product, but after working out the numbers, Starbucks acquired the company. The results of that transaction have been more than $6 million in grants and 420,000 people given safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.

Chris Deckert, junior business management major, found Thum's hard work inspiring.

"His mission statement, I believe, is a noble one. He gave some wise words about following through with what you believe in and keeping an open mind to opportunities."

When a consumer buys a bottle of Ethos Water, it generates donations for The Starbucks Foundation. A country and an organization that focuses on the world water crisis is picked by a board. The Starbucks Foundation then gives a grant to the organization and projects are worked on.

"The best part is getting to meet people whose lives have changed from the projects," Thum said.

He shared the story of Dian, an Indonesian girl. Dian attended a school that had no toilets for girls, so she had to defecate in the bushes or walk home. Since most of the students had no shoes, they would get worms transmitted through their feet.

"After we installed toilets and dewormed the kids, it changed their lives."

Andrew Ivey, senior environmental engineering major and president of the UCF chapter of Engineers Without Borders, asked Thum what is put in place to ensure that the water projects are successful in developing countries.

"A thing that we've done is set up political bodies, water committees of men and women, to basically maintain the water wells and raise money to maintain the facility," Thum answered.

Thum went on to speak about his newest venture: Fonderie47. His mission is to reduce the number of weapons in African war zones, like AK-47s, and transform them into pieces of jewelry. There are about 20 million AK-47s in Africa and the sales of the jewelry fund the destruction of more weapons. The Fonderie47 organization will be launched in two weeks.

"Fonderie47 and Ethos both create things that people already buy but it makes people aware and they become walking advocates for causes," Thum said. "I see my job as basically changing the way people think."

Thum spoke to the students about making the impossible, possible.

"I tell you this from experience," he said. "Most of us, the more experience we have in life, the more we try to come up with efficient short-cuts. We reject bold ideas as being crazy, as being impossible."

Thum encouraged the students to get involved in new ideas, become mentors, volunteers, donors, investors and to network.

"I'm not telling you to be gullible and help anyone that comes up to you," he clarified. "Not all efforts will succeed but it is important to take risks because when failure happens, we can learn from it."