About

The ColaLife movement is based on three facts:

  1. You can buy a Coca-Cola almost any where you go in the world, even in the most remote parts of developing countries
  2. In these same places 1 in 5 children die before their fifth birthday from preventable causes. Most die from dehydration from diarrhoea.
  3. The child mortality figures have not changed significantly for at least 3 decades which would indicate that current initiatives are not working

Our hypothesis is that getting very simple medicines, and the knowledge about how to use them, to the places you can buy a Coca-Cola would have a huge positive impact on thousands of children’s lives every day. At present more than 4,000 under fives die every day in Africa alone.


Empty shelves at Tiriri health centre in Katine, Uganda. Photograph: Guardian/Martin Godwin
A fully stocked retail outlet. Photograph: Simon Berry

ColaLife is talking to Coca-Cola about opening up its distribution channels in developing countries to save lives, especially children’s lives, by carrying much needed ’social products’ such as oral rehydration salts and high-dose vitamin A tablets. For the latest on the campaign, please visit the blog. ColaLife is an independent and purely voluntary movement backed by thousands of supporters form across the world. Many have joined the ColaLife Facebook Page and Facebook Group.

These supporters include experts in public health, emerging markets in developing countries, logistics experts and people working on the frontline in developing countries on maternal and child health. We are in the process of establishing a virtual advisory board and our first member is Don Nutbeam who is Professor of Public Health (and Vice Chancellor) at Southampton University.


Professor Don Nutbeam

ColaLife was launched by Simon Berry, who had the an idea while working on the British Aid programme in 1988. However, no real progress was made until Simon floated the idea on his blog in May 2008, he has managed to create a huge community around the campaign, through a Facebook and appearances on Radio 4’s iPM programme. He is now in discussions with Coca-Cola. He has also brokered a partnership between the international NGO, AED and Coca-Cola to trial the ideas behind ColaLife.

The latest progress reports are here.

This 30 second video was produced on 19 October 2008 to support our submission to Google’s Project 10^100 initiative:

Since May 2008 the original idea has been developed further and is now focussed on the ‘aidpod’ concept - a wedge-shaped pod that fits in the unused space between the necks of the bottles in a Coca-Cola crate. Here is a video describing Mark III of the aidpod design.

At the heart of ColaLife is the principle of local determination. ColaLife must be implemented in a way with empowers and strengthens the local public health infrastructure.
ColaLife and local determination
This is explained in more detail here. Our key principles are here.

On 25/4/08 Coca-Cola committed to ‘trial the ideas behind Colalife’ on the BBC’s iPM Programme. To hear an edited version of the interview click on the play button below:

This is the full interview. Please ignore the first 45 seconds of introduction to the whole iPM programme:

Here is a recent interview (October 2009) with Simon Berry where he commits to giving up his day time job in June 2010 to dedicate himself full time to ColaLife.

The campaign has made so much progress that we are now moving into implementation mode. We have described our initial priorities and how we would achieve these in our first development plan published in December 2009:

Development Plan cover page

But Simon can’t do all this alone. An email group has been formed for those that want to be more involved, and this site created to help spread the message even further. If you have anything to offer the campaign, please do get involved.

>> Our full aims and objectives

Last updated: 1/1/10