The world is our classroom and learning from others can be transformative.

At Cosaris we truly believe that cross-cultural learning is the key to inspiring meaningful change, and we delivered a unique educational exchange to Solvatten and the American University, helping every stakeholder achieve their respective visions together.

Solvatten received key learnings from the market they were entering. The findings were both strategic in terms of marketing concepts, potential US partners and a network of donors to support their cause, and intuitive, receiving young, fresh ideas from students who understand social media, influencers and attitudes to environmental, charitable concepts like Solvattens.

The American University students and faculty received unrivalled learning experience by working on a project which would have real implications and providing research to an organisation which would use their findings. The students delivered comprehensive analysis of the foundation’s target donor demographics, social media marketing concepts alongside outreach, subscription, fundraising and corporate sponsorship strategies.

Darwin understood that those who learned to collaborate and adapt most effectively, prevail.

The key to this project’s success was understanding that cooperation would achieve a far greater impact and benefit for both, organisations’ stakeholders as well as the thousands of people whose lives are changed by Solvatten’s charity every year.

Community is a huge part of Cosaris’ solution to each project we undertake. We identified Solvatten’s business need following our work with them as a business partner for study tours and we were able to foster a strong, collaborative working relationship with them allowing them to reach out to us when they needed to break into the USA.

Cosaris understood the specific needs of every stakeholder in this partnership and our project management experience, co-ordination skills and proactive team ensured each individual at Solvatten and the American University brought their best to the project whilst also receiving the most impactful benefits for themselves too.

Discussing how multi-faceted the learning was on both sides of the project through the detailed work and actionable insights provided, Erica Krishnamurthy said: “I thought it would be students trying to learn from us, and we would be training them. In reality, I ended up learning from them. At every turn, I was impressed. I never could have imagined that they’d produce as much as they did. They superseded my expectations, and those of the Solvatten Foundation.”

Allowing your team to showcase their expertise increases their engagement and backing of your brand.

In this project Cosaris collaborated with all stakeholders throughout the process to ensure both partners were delivering what each other needed and were given the platform to showcase their most productive and informed abilities too.

A clear example of strong engagement was around the marketing strategies and social media use within the US market. Solvatten were keen to learn more about this and so Cosaris collaborated with the students to support them in presenting their passion about the purpose and mission and showcase this enthusiasm in a professional, actionable, and impactful manner.

Feedback from Solvatten was overwhelmingly positive as they were immediately able to benefit from the insight and perspective of students who combined expertise in sustainability as well day-to-day knowledge of social media and social attitudes in the US market.

Commenting on how engaged the partnership was and the unique insights provided to Solvatten, Erica Krishnamurthy, Chair of the Solvatten Foundation, said: “Where they had a direct impact right away was the social media aspect. I liked the generational factor. I had questions about Tik Tok… and the latest thing for younger generations. They quickly educated me on that! They really dove deep getting solid statistics about our donors, the age group, the type of social media each generation focused on. I could use literally all that information as a foundation. It was critical for us.”

“What we have to learn, we learn by doing.” So said Aristotle and this is the ethos we instil in every project and every stakeholder we work with as well as practicing what we preach to.

For Solvatten and the American University, we provided the experience of a fully immersive partnership allowing students to experience how the world of business and social enterprise works, whilst delivering results and actionable strategies from a unique and outside perspective to Solvatten.

By providing experiences which engage and benefit every stakeholder we build partnerships which thrive for an individual project but also into the future too.

Talking about the increased reach and deliverable actions the experience provided for them, Erica highlighted how Solvatten were immediately able to apply the students’ insights and data and “saw the numbers increase” straightaway. For the students, the experience on this project was a million miles away from a traditional capstone project where they would often work in a simulated business environment and not benefit from the thrilling experience of actually knowing their work would be used to support the organisation, drive new growth for Solvatten, and make a difference to thousands of people in developing countries.

As a result of the positive and impactful experience working with students, Solvatten reached out to some of those who worked on this project to be part of their team on future opportunities and internships. The shared positive experience of working together and journeying into new ventures and markets resulted in a cycle of success and an engaged community which is still delivering to this day.