Blue Planet Network

Since our founding in 2002, it has been Blue Planet Network's ambitious goal to ensure that 200 million people in need gain access to safe drinking water. But gaining access to water is just the first step. Keeping it is as important. In its early years, Blue Planet Network worked to build awareness and funds for water projects through epic undertakings. Blue Planet Run 2007, the first global relay run for safe drinking water, and Blue Planet Run: The Race To Provide Safe Drinking Water To The World, a powerful book that tells the human story of water through photos and essays, connected people around the world to the water crisis and what they could do to solve it. Along the way, however, we realized that all the water crisis awareness in the world wouldn't help if people couldn't easily find great implementing organizations and water project plans, and be able to easily track the impact of their support. Likewise, the experience of those capable implementers would be wasted if they didn't have a way to continuously improve through learning best practices and sharing their work with the world. We saw that we could add real value to the fight for clean water by creating a scalable platform to 1) connect water project funders and implementers to create new, effective partnerships; and 2) manage the planning, funding, implementation and tracking of tens of thousands of water and sanitation projects for greater impact. We always work to be catalysts for positive change across the entire water and sanitation sector. We launched Peer Water Exchange, our original online technology platform, in 2006 with five member organizations. This has grown into a vibrant community delivering real improvements to water and sanitation programs and projects around the world. We changed our name to Blue Planet Network in 2010 to emphasize our mission and to welcome funders, as well as implementers, as members to help us expand our reach and collective impact. Blue Planet Network and Thrive Networks merged on September 6, 2013, bringing together Thrive Networks' market-leading "pay for performance" water and sanitation programs (WASH) and Blue Planet Network's unique online collaboration and impact analysis platform. The merger will accelerate innovation across the sector, drive learning and visibility, and deliver improved clean water and sanitation solutions to more people around the globe. Blue Planet Network is now a program of Thrive Networks. Blue Planet Network continues to operate and grow its online collaboration platform and network of 100+ expert WASH organizations. Blue Planet Network will retain its name and remain an open community and platform driven by its members' needs.