Social Marketing for Safe Water

most of their budget on food, followed by energy, housing, transportation and health(WRI & IFC, 2007). These markets bear enormous opportunities. The private sectorjust has to think about innovative and viable business models and effective strategiesto meet BOP needs with market-based solutions. One innovative and promisingbusiness approach at the BoP is pursued by the social-enterprise Spring Health,which is presented and analyzed in the second part of the thesis.2.2 The Power of Business to Alleviate Poverty: A New Approach by NGOsPrahalad’s BoP proposition and the growing number of literature and scholars,which deal with this subject, also influenced the current practices of internationaldevelopment assistance and non-profit organizations. While businesses mainly try toexplore this lucrative market to make profits, non-governmental organizations(NGOs) consider the BoP approach as a poverty alleviation strategy. A market-basedapproach can help increase the effectiveness of their programs and financialsustainability (London, 2007).Several scholars criticized the traditional approaches of foreign aid and questionedtheir validity. One of the most prominent opponents is William Easterly, whoillustrated the ineffectiveness of development assistance in his famous book “TheWhite Man’s Burden” (2006). He notes that the attempt of Western organizations toimpose solutions from above during the past 60 years has failed to help developingcountries. Instead, he argues, only if the West frees itself from the utopian goal tototally eradicate poverty and starts to search for indigenous approaches fordevelopment, the poor can benefit (Easterly, 2006). Dambisa Moyo, another wellknownauthor, even postulates in her controversial book “Dead Aid” that aid madepoor people in Africa even poorer (Moyo, 2010). In her view, the huge flow of fundsfavored corruption and the outflow of foreign capital in the recipient countries. Buteven if some criticism may go too far, non-profit and development agenciesrecognized that traditional approaches to poverty reduction often failed. They startedto consider a market-based approach as a promising alternative.During the past years, a growing number of development and non-profitorganizations ventured into the BoP market. But a few organizations have alreadyexplored market-based initiatives for poverty alleviation long before the BoP concept9