We received some more coverage for our recent win in the Genesis business planning competition. In this case it was from Sydney University's psychology department. You read all about on the Sydney University news website.  I have copied and pasted it case they ever take it off their website.

Congratulations to Dr Niko Tiliopoulos who was part of a student led business team that recently won the Sydney Genesis Business Plan Prize for Best Social or Not-for-profit Entrepreneurship Award. The other business team members are: Brett Samuel, Peter Evans, Valentine Cupac, Errol Samuel, Wei Ni Ma and Chris Hamer. The team's business plan is titled "Safety Thirst." 

Executive Summary: Safety Thirst has a simple vision, safe drinking water for every person in the world. Easy to say, but it sounds impossible, right? Our solution is to focus on water analysis in developing countries. This problem might sound like a small issue compared with problems like war, or famine, but in fact water borne disease is the largest cause of death in developing countries. Unfortunately, as with so many other problems this world faces, the media is not interested. It simply is not exciting enough!

We are going to change that. By providing proper water testing, we are empowering communities to take control of their water supplies and better understand the causes of water borne disease. We are not going to do this with a radical new technology that is unproven. We are going to use a proven technique George Whiteside developed for urine and blood testing called zero-cost systems.

The idea of zero-cost systems is almost self-explanatory; reduce the cost of a system to as close to nothing as possible. This may sound inconceivable but zero-cost testing for blood and urine samples is  already changing the way medical practitioners in developing countries work. Leveraging camera phone technology, tests that require expert analysis can now be done in real time. In the case of water this makes testing more affordable and more practical.

The Sydney Genesis Business Plan Competition is an annual competition aiming to encourage a culture of innovation amongst students at the University of Sydney.

As you can see it is all favourable coverage. However they did stick Chris's name in even though I have not got him on board yet. Oh well, what to do?

I am really pleased to annouce that we have just won the Sydney University Genesis best social enterprise business plan competition. 

According to the Genesis website it was "awarded to the best not-for-profit or social business that the judges think is most able to bring its vision into effect. The winning business will have shown that they have created an original solution to an existing problem, and that it will be brought to action by an exceptional team of driven individuals."

This is great news, however in more importantly the judges were excited by our idea. They are keen to see our idea take off and are offering all kinds of support. Winning this prize will make it much easier for us to get others on board and make it easier to get more funding for Safety Thirst. This is a big step forward.

If you want to read more about the award have a look at the Genesis website.