Machiel Van Dooren is a social entrepreneur who has developed a double sided initiative for the provision of water in European countries and also developing countries in Africa. Machiel connects business in Europe to then deliver results in Africa with the development of bore holes and water connections.

Made Blue is the latest of Machiel’s business and social endeavours, aiming to raise awareness and enhance the branding of companies that align with Made Blue, whilst drawing out funding to create clean drinking water in Africa. Made Blue has already created over two million litres of clean drinking water in Africa, going a long way to help achieve SDG 6, clean water and sanitation. We spoke to Machiel to find out more on how Made Blue began, how it functions right now, and what the future holds for Made Blue.

The story started quite a while ago, about 15 years ago, together with my current partners Frank and Robin. We started venturing in Africa, working with various entrepreneurs helping them to make a better business, but also with local charities to help them generate their own income. We set up internet cafés with red cross in Ethiopia and Uganda as well as helping coffee farmers in Tanzania on Mount Kilimanjaro. In that time, we were really struck by the enthusiasm and drive of small-scale entrepreneurs and how you could blend business and charity.

About eight years ago when I became a parent I said ‘you know, what we want now is to travel less, but we still want to make an impact from the Netherlands’.

Taking a home base gave us another initiative in 2005/2006, we started a small venture named OCO 2 with WWF, based on carbon offsetting. We were the first Netherlands based initiative for companies to offset their carbon footprint and generate a positive impact. This brought us into a network with bigger companies, and a few of those companies started talking to us by 2013, about wanting to save water but also looking at storytelling to go with that. We started to convey the stakeholders enthusiasm to save water. Out of these conversations Made Blue was born in 2014.

Read more about Made Blue by Oliver Speakman at Medium