Two Students Create Company to Provide Clean Water

After senior Marissa Frank’s service trips to Ghana (2014) and Zambia (2016), she realized the overwhelming lack of access to clean drinking water in many African communities. Struck by this devastating reality, Frank and her friend (and now business partner), Jaclyn Campson ’18, teamed up to create True Thabo, a company whose sole mission is to provide clean water to schools to ensure that no student risks getting sick from their water source.

“Our goal is to make people aware that this crisis is occurring, and how they can get involved,” said Frank.

True Thabo’s life-changing water systems are funded through water bottle sales; hence, their slogan, “Get Water. Give Water.” One hundred percent of the net proceeds from the bottle sales goes directly to providing water purification systems to partner schools in Africa. Team Thabo equips these schools with not only the LifeStraw Community system and MadiDrops, ensuring that their water is clean enough to drink, but also provides the necessary curriculum on the water crisis and waterborne illness prevention.

“We have become advocates for our partner schools, and we take that job very seriously,” said Campson.

 
This year, True Thabo teamed up with Professor Keith Yurgosky’s Social Entrepreneurship class to provide donations to benefit of the Linda Community School located outside of Livingstone, Zambia.

“Our Social Entrepreneurship class contributed to the project by donating money raised through a car detailing fundraiser. By doing so, were able to learn more about the social enterprise business model,” said Yurgosky, a business analyst with Scranton's Small Business Development Center.

Their donation will provide the school, home to 470 students, with water purification systems, which would have been impossible without the help of True Thabo and the donations provided. True Thabo’s ability “to form relationships with international contacts and ship products across the world, while excelling in customer service,” is especially impressive, said Yurgosky.

For more information about True Thabo and their mission visit: truethabo.com.