Customers stopping by to rehydrate in a BH Live Terrace café are doing their bit when they buy a bottle of water to help provide thousands of people in developing countries get clean water, decent toilets and hygiene education to improve their lives and livelihoods.
Every year, customers in more than 30 BH Live-operated cafés, bars, venues and centres across the south of England consume more than 75,000 litres of mineral water, bottled and sold by the British social enterprise Belu.
Belu donates 100% of its profits to Water Aid and has so far contributed more than £2.2 million to the charity’s work in transforming the lives of the poorest and most marginalised people by improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
Belu is the UK’s most ethical bottled water brand and is a popular choice for customers across BH Live’s network, including London Aquatics Centre and Copper Box Arena at Queen Elizabeth Park, Bournemouth International Centre and Portsmouth Pyramids.
Belu is also provided as part of BH Live’s catering offer for conferences, exhibitions and banqueting events.
“One very simple change in our procurement strategy is helping to make a dramatic difference to many thousands of lives. Belu and BH Live make perfect partners in a social mission to enrich lives wherever and whenever possible,” says Alex Robertson, BH Live’s Head of Hospitality. “Being active, attending live shows and networking at conference is thirsty work, so we sell lots of water, every day. With more three million visits a year across our venues and centre portfolio, we can work with Belu to make a sustained and major impact on water quality and availability in the developing world.”
“We are delighted to be working with BH Live, a fellow social enterprise, to transform the lives of poor communities across the world with access to clean water,” says Karen Lynch, CEO Belu Water Ltd. “Today there are 844 million people in the world without safe water to drink. Just £15 can help provide one person with access to safe water. With the support of customers like BH Live, Belu has helped to transform over 146,000 lives with access to safe water.”
“Belu donates all profits to WaterAid, so each bottle sold at BH Live venues and leisure centres will make a difference to someone where the need is greatest and help to end water poverty”.
Find out more about Belu at www.belu.org
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors:
Image Caption:
Obse Abebe, 5, enjoys clean water for the first time. Negera, Ethiopia.
Credit WaterAid, Behailu Shiferaw
Case Study BH Live and Belu Water
Supporting children to have more time to play and brighter futures.
All profits from every bottle of Belu sold at BH Live venues and leisure centres support people in developing countries to get access to water, a decent toilet and hygiene education to improve their lives and livelihoods.
When children do not suffer from water related diseases or have to spend hours each day helping to fetch water from unsafe water sources, they have more time to play and a brighter future, with time saved collecting water attending school instead.
Negera, a small village in Oromia, Ethiopia, is not going to be the same, say its people. The village has clean water for the first time in its history, with the support of Belu’s charity partner WaterAid. Clean water is piped down to the centre of the village using the natural force of gravity from a clean spring on a hill. Between the source and the water tap is a small reservoir with a storage capacity of 2,000 litres to save water in the evenings. For a small village with less than 32 families it’s more than enough.
Aberash Likassa, 35, is a mother of five. She says, “My children have had parasites, and they have had diarrhoea because they drank unclean water. We bathed our children by the river, which made them sick. We washed our clothes by the river, which left the clothes discoloured. Now we will bathe our children with clean water, they will drink clean water and they will be healthier. Our cattle will not die from leeches. We are very, very happy and grateful. May God bless you for getting us this water point.”
Aberash’s children, Ebise and Obse (pictured), were among the first children to come and enjoy the clean water as the water point is right in front of their home.
Watch Belu’s CEO Karen Lynch talking about Belu and her experience of visiting a WA project in India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoa2JSWwTYs
For more information about BH Live please contact:
Elizabeth Symmons, PR & Corporate Communications Executive
E: press.office@bhlive.org.uk
T: (01202) 055562
About BH Live
BH Live is the South Coast’s leading operator of leisure and event venues; a social enterprise that designs and builds engaging experiences to inspire people and enrich lives.
With more than three million visits a year and over £36.5 million turnover, the organisation is changing lives – placing it at the heart of the UK’s growing social economy.
In 2015/16 BH Live hosted more than 500 events, sold over half a million cultural, sporting and entertainment tickets. They welcomed 2.4 million active participants into its leisure centres and 118,000 conference and exhibition delegates into its venues. This contributed an estimated £66.3 million to the local economy through business and cultural tourism.
Get social with us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter @BHLIVE_UK
About BH Live Hospitality
BH Live Hospitality is BH Live’s catering team, providing event and retail services at leisure and cultural venues across Dorset, the South East and Greater London.
Terrace cafés and bars operate at Bournemouth Pavilion, Bournemouth International Centre, Littledown, Pelhams, BH Live Active, Queen’s Park, Queen’s Park Golf Course, Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts and Portsmouth Pyramids.
Terrace cafés, bars and vending outlets also operate across the South and Greater London in partnership with Fusion Lifestyle and GLL.
Locations include London Aquatics Centre (LAC) and Copper Box Arena in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. For more visit bhlive.org.uk/hospitality
About the Copper Box Arena
Located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the Copper Box Arena is operated by charitable social enterprise GLL, on behalf of London Legacy Development Corporation. After hosting handball, modern pentathlon fencing and goalball during the 2012 Games, the Copper Box Arena is now one of London’s most versatile and exciting events venues and is open to the public as a fully-equipped, 100-station gym. As part of its London 2012 Legacy commitments, the Copper Box Arena also delivers a diverse and plentiful grassroots sports programme for the local community. In 2015, the Copper Box Arena won the accolade for New Event Space at the national Event Awards.
For more information visit copperboxarena.org.uk or follow on Twitter, @CopperBoxArena
About the London Aquatics Centre
Located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the London Aquatics Centre is operated by charitable social enterprise GLL, on behalf of London Legacy Development Corporation. After hosting swimming, diving, synchronised swimming, modern pentathlon and Paralympic swimming during the 2012 Games, the London Aquatics Centre is one of London’s most iconic venues, which has welcomed more than 1.7 million visitors since it opened on the 1st March 2014. As part of its London 2012 Legacy commitments, the London Aquatics Centre now offers affordable public swimming and fitness facilities to all ages and abilities, and hosts a variety of events. The world-class facility is also used as an elite training venue and is the training home of Olympic bronze medallist, Tom Daley, and elite swimmer, Aimee Willmott.
For more information visit www.londonaquaticscentre.org or follow on Twitter, @AquaticsCentre
About Belu
Belu is an award-winning ethical business and leading social enterprise that produces great tasting British natural mineral water, sold in all the best places. Karen Lynch was appointed CEO in 2010 and the brand was re-launched in 2011. The new brand vision and business model has seen revenue grow 116% during the WaterAid partnership.
Committed to reducing the environmental aspect, Belu is the only British bottled water to be 100% Carbon Neutral to PAS2060 and the market leader in ethical glass recycling. Currently investing in the Akkihebbal Run-of-River Hydro Project, Karnataka in India, Belu constantly develops new ways to off set its environmental impact. In 2015, Karen Lynch was invited to UK National Day at the Milan Expo with David Cameron to share Belu’s ethical business model.
As the exclusive bottled water partner to WaterAid, Belu pledged to give £1m by 2020, and to date have donated over £1.5m transforming the lives of 100,000 people.
Belu are members of Social Enterprise UK, support the Buy Social Campaign and are an Approved Supplier of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, Preferred Water Partner of AA Hotel Services and Hospitality Partner of Condé Nast Johansens. Belu has been a CoolBrand since 2012.
About Wateraid
WaterAid’s vision is of a world where everyone has access to safe water and sanitation. The international organisation works in 37 countries across Africa, Asia, Central America and the Pacific Region to transform lives by improving access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in some of the world’s poorest communities. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 23 million people with safe water and, since 2004, 21 million people with sanitation. For more information, visit www.wateraid.org, follow @WaterAidUK on Twitter, or visit www.facebook.com/wateraid.
• Nearly 900 children die every day from diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation, or 314,000 children per year.
• Over 650 million people (around one in ten) are without safe water
• Over 2.3 billion people (around one in three) live without improved sanitation
• For every £1 invested in water and sanitation, an average of £4 is returned in increased productivity.