Designed to showcase Thirst's achievements in the WE Water Experience education programme, a collaborative project between Thirst, Inditex and the YOU Foundation (formerly the Foundation for UNESCO). The aim of our education modules are to educate the next generation of leaders about water scarcity and virtual water. We provide them with the intellectual and practical tools they need to make water-wise choices and reduce their water footprint. Visit our website for more information: www.thirstforwater.org

1. ANNUAL REPORT
2015

2. Welcome
I am pleased to present to you this annual
report for the year of 2015. Our achievements
outlined in the following pages will
demonstrate to you the success of the WE
Water Experience in China, illustrated by the
yearly growth of our programmes since their
launch in 2013. These figures indicate the
resonance of our messages with a growing
community of environmentally aware
millennials in China. This tells me that there
is huge demand for this type of environmental
education, both from educational institutions
and from students.
We began as a small group of young global
leaders, compelled to take action when we
understood the impact of water crises on
global economies, societies and, ultimately,
life on earth. Now we are proud to call
ourselves a movement, a movement of water
ambassadors and change-makers who truly
believe in the power of the individual to make
a difference.
Since the launch of our programme in 2013,
almost 100,000 students have graduated
from the WE Water Experience Education
module, over 35,000 students have taken
part in our Club activities, and over 17,000
students have participated in our innovation
competitions.
This year we have developed the WE Water
Experience in 4 core elements: Education,
Clubs, Innovation, and finally the Thirst
Academy,whichwasanewinitiativelaunched
in September 2015. It provides a platform to
capture the interest and imagination of our
most powerful asset: the students who have
been inspired by our messages and wish to
be part of the solution to our generation’s
most urgent problem. The success of this
programme, demonstrated by its rapid
growth in such a short period of time, is
indicative of the level of interest in our highly
engaging modules in combination with the
very real sense of urgency to solve the global
water crisis (and the planet!) for generations
to come.
I am extremely proud to be able to tell you
that, in 2015, we have grown our Education
programme by 214%, Clubs by 100% and
Innovation by 300% compared to last year’s
figures. We are confident that we will be
able to continue along this trajectory and
have therefore set ambitious targets for
2016 to reflect this. We are also continuing
to develop creative strategies to reduce our
cost of impact. This year, we have reduced
this to a mere $0.63 per person reached - a
55% reduction on last year.
“we are proud to call ourselves
a movement, a movement of water
ambassadors and change-makers
who truly believe in the power of the
individual to make a difference.”
The more people we reach, the greater our
impact on the preservation of this precious
planet. Hence we are also developing a
global media strategy to raise the profile of
our organisation, as well as the partners who
have made all of this possible.
Together we are changing the world. Thank
you for being part of it.
Mina Guli
Founder and CEO
With thanks to the key supporters of this amazing programme. Without you, none of this would be possible:

3. In 2013, we reached 5,485 students. Building
on our success of the previous year and
leveraging our new schools partnerships, we
were extremely proud to grow our programme
by almost 300% to reach 21,810 students in
2014. In 2015, we have continued this theme
of expansion and consolidation and have
grown our programme by a further 214%
compared with 2014’s figures, reaching a
total of 68,458 students this year alone!
Leveraging our new school networks, our
continually developing partnership with ESD,
the growth of the ThirstAcademy and our new
operations in Chongqing, we forecast that we
will be able to reach an impressive 255,000
students with the WE Water Experience in
2016! This represents further growth of over
270% compared with 2015’s figures.
In total, 95,753 students have graduated
from the WE Water Experience and we have
established 138 school partnerships this
year, bringing our total to 224 to-date.
Education
1.7xthe number of new
partner schools as last year
Working with138 New schools
68,458
Students
graduated from the
program in 2015
2015 has been the most successful year
for the WE Water Experience Education
programme yet!
We have achieved 152% of our target number
of graduates, reaching a total of 68,458
students, among which 90% were from public
schools, 93% listened to our presentation in
Chinese, and 60% were within our key target
age group of 12 to 16.
Our growth since 2013
The increasing numbers of students
who have graduated from the WE Water
Experience year-on-year since its conception
in 2013 are a testament to the commitment
and dedication of the Thirst team and the
resonation of our messages with Chinese
youth, in combination with with a highly
engaging series of standalone and long-term
education modules.
90%
students are
from public
schools
93%
of presentations
in
Chinese
3.1xthe number of students
as 2014
52%above target
for 2015

4. Securing long-term
school partnerships
Thirst has gained an excellent reputation
among schools in Beijing and beyond,
establishing 138 new long-term school
partnerships this year. This is indicated by our
repeated invitations to return to our partner
schools and deliver our presentations to their
new students year-on-year.
Since there are a limited number of schools
in Beijing, we are now focusing our attention
on other cities, in addition to developing long-
term curriculums in schools within Beijing.
These long-term curriculums are particularly
popular with primary schools, including the
Primary School Attached to Capital Normal
University and New Hope Primary School.
Our long-term modules combine WE Water
Experience presentations, Club activities,
and specialised lessons focusing on topics
such as the water cycle and environmental
legislation in more detail. Based on the
success of these modules, we will continue
to grow these programmes through 2016
and roll them out to more and more schools.
Expanding beyond Beijing
We now have established operations in
Shanghai, which delivered 29% of our total
student graduates in Q4. In 2016, we plan
to leverage our existing school networks in
Chongqing and establish operations there.
We conservatively forecast 30,000 graduates
from Chongqing in 2016.
Furthermore, with the enthusiasm of 486
newly qualified Thirst Ambassadors behind
us, Thirst’s profile across other provinces in
China continues to grow. Schools in many
cities including Tianjin, Nanjing, Ningbo and
Wuhan now have established Thirst hubs
and hold courses and activities on a weekly
basis.
224
school partnerships
since 2013
Education
7,965
graduates in a
single week!
255,000
graduates
forecasT for 2016
Weekly performance
We reached an average of 1,317 students
each week across the year, peaking at 7,965
students in a single week in October. To
illustrate the rapid growth of the programme,
this figure represents the average monthly
total number of graduates for the first half
of 2015! The first week of December also
represented an outstanding performance,
reaching 5,072 students in one week.
Quarterly performance
Throughout the year we have consistently
reached more students than in previous
years.
Q1 and Q3 traditionally represent quieter
periods for us as these fall across school
holiday periods. We use these times to
secure more school partnerships and develop
additional modules.
This year, during the quiet summer months
of Q3, we developed the Thirst Academy
modules and leveraged our university
connections to roll it out across student
volunteer groups in Q4. This explains the
huge growth in numbers of graduates in Q4
Number of graduates from the WE Water Experience
(Quarterly comparison), 2014-2015

5. Training
The Thirst Academy is comprised of a suite
of rigorous training modules, including on-
and offline programmes and specialised
one-to-one tutoring. Specifically, our training
programme includes video tutorials covering
everything from the WE Water Experience
presentation itself, to presentation skills and
how to engage with students of varying age
groups. We also host sessions on WeChat,
providing our Ambassadors with a forum to
share their experiences and ask questions
of our expert team. Further to these, we
hold training sessions in our offices, as
well as additional on-to-one training for
our Ambassador Leaders, who represent
our brand when recruiting additional
Ambassadors at their universities.
Recruitment
In 2015, we tested a number of methods for
recruitment, including cold calls to university
volunteer groups, as well as recruitment
notices during WE Water Experience
presentations at universities. Our most
successful technique was a WeChat online
speech, which involved over 700 students,
and from which we recruited 70 Thirst
Ambassadors and 10 interns. Looking
ahead to 2016, we will continue to develop
our WeChat presence and post additional
adverts online inviting students to participate
in further online speeches.
Growth since September 2015
Having launched the Thirst Academy in
September 2015, we are extremely proud
of the results that we have achieved so far.
We have 486 qualified Thirst Ambassadors
delivering our messages in 8 provinces
across China. To-date, they have reached
20,045 students and established long-
term curriculums in 20 schools. Our largest
Ambassador hubs are in Nanjing, Wuhan,
Tianjin and Shanghai, where we have 14
of our Gold Ambassadors championing our
cause.
As our Thirst Ambassadors hone their skills
we find that their reach increases rapidly. We
have been blown away by their commitment,
dedicationandenthusiasmtosharemessages
of water conservation. This simply serves to
prove our driving belief - that small actions
truly can create big changes! Our relatively
small (but growing!) base of Ambassadors
are able to reach a proportionally increasing
number of students month-by-month.
Thirst Academy
Since we launched the WE Water Experience
in 2013, we have been inundated with
requests from students to become more
involved with Thirst and the dissemination
of our water-saving messages. This year, in
response to these requests, we launched a
completely new initiative: the ThirstAcademy.
Interested graduates of the WE Water
Experience, as well as university volunteer
groups, are invited to attend the Thirst
Academy and, once they pass our rigorous
training modules, they qualify as Thirst
Ambassadors. Our dedicatedThirstAcademy
team based out of Beijing then support our
Ambassadors in reaching out to schools in
their local communities and delivering the
WE Water Experience modules.
Our Ambassadors are our strongest assets.
They live and breathe our water-saving
messages and, as they become increasingly
invested in the Academy, this reinforces
their own awareness of and commitment to
water conservation. We have already seen
significant behaviour changes among our
Ambassador groups. They are therefore the
ideal candidates to represent our brand and
our messages when they go out into their
local communities.
486
Qualified
Ambassadors
Since September
20,045
Students reached
by our
Ambassadors

6. Rewarding
Our Ambassadors are categorised into Gold,
Silver and Bronze Ambassadors, depending
on their level of training and experience.
Developing this hierarchical system gives
our lower-level Ambassadors specific goals
and related benefits to strive towards, while
giving our more experienced Ambassadors a
real sense of achievement.
Each month we select our highest
performing Ambassador group and individual
Ambassador and express our dedicated
gratitude and congratulations to them via
a newsletter sent out to the whole Thirst
Academy. As we continue to expand this
programme into 2016, we plan to offer some
prizes to provide further incentive for our
Ambassadors to grow the programmes in
their communities.
Forecast for 2016
We expect the impressive growth in popularity
of the Thirst Academy and the reach of our
Ambassadors to continue along its current
trajectory, enabling us to reach 70,000
students in 2016 with our Ambassadors
alone.
Next year, we will continue to develop our
training modules, based on feedback from
current Ambassadors and teachers. We will
also grow our dedicated Academy team in
order to be able to reach more and more
potential Ambassadors, using tried and
tested techniques such as our WeChat
speeches and other online forums.
Thirst Academy
Programme delivery
Following the same system as our
Education team in Beijing, once trained our
Ambassadors are expected to leverage
existing connections to schools, as well as
making cold calls to new schools in their
local communities.
They then deliver the WE Water Experience
presentation, establish Clubs and run Club
activities. Many of our Ambassadors have
also set up long-term curriculums in some of
their schools.
Reporting
Each week, every Ambassador group will
produce a report and send it to our team,
detailing the presentations and activities that
they have run and at which schools. They
are also expected to provide photographs of
every presentation or activity.
Reviewing
We have developed a review system to
ensure that all of our Ambassadors are
delivering high-quality presentations and
activities. Each Ambassador is assessed
on an ongoing basis on the following key
categories: presentation performance;
teachers’ feedback; Thirst team’s feedback;
ability to reach a reasonable and periodically
increasing number of students; administrative
efficiency.
Not only are we concerned with the
performance of our Ambassadors but we are
also very keen to collect their feedback on
our programmes. We hold monthly online
sessions and invite all of our Ambassadors
to participate, providing them and us with
a forum to review our programmes and
processes and share ideas for improving and
developing our modules based on their on-
the-ground experience.
Number of students educated
by Thirst Ambassadors
Oct NovSep Dec
No. of students
educated by
Ambassadors
20000
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0

7. Zhou Haibing
Gold Ambassador
Haibing has educated 105 students in
total in 2015.
“It has been an unforgettable experience.
Every time I stand in front up the children
with the T-shirt of ‘Thirst Ambassador’ I
feel recharged and cannot wait to deliver
positive energy. I hope more people to
join us to build a beautiful world.”
Yang Wen
Bronze Ambassador
Wen has educated 205 students in total
in 2015.
“On the one hand, children’s enthusiasm
and innocence increases my interest in
teaching; on the other hand, the activity
raises my awareness of water-saving.
When I use water I always recall what I
teach and it has changed my living habit”
Thirst Academy
Chen Dan
Gold Ambassador
Dan has educated 370 students and is
our highest performing Ambassador of
2015, establishing a number of long-term
school partnerships.
“Education of water-saving can change
the earth’s destiny. Thirst offers me the
chance to improve myself, influence
others and change the world.”
Zhang Xuetong
Gold Ambassador
Xuetong led her team to reach 416
students in 2015.
“After two terms of teaching, I feel
strongly that environmental awareness is
penetrating into our life gradually. Seeing
our children’s activities of saving water, I
believe that our effort is very meaningful.”
Meet some of our fantastic Thirst Ambassadors:

8. INNOVATION
100,000
Students
in 2016
Our premise is that young people can solve
the problems of the future. We believe
that, in order to solve the problem of global
water crises, we need the future leaders
and consumers to not only understand
the problem, but also to be engaged in its
solution. Unconstrained by conventional
thinking, students have the imagination,
creativity and will to come up with out-of-the-
box innovations and campaigns to reach the
masses and change the way that individuals
and organisations use water.
Our innovation competitions have proven to
be extremely popular with students, teachers
and partners, as well as generating significant
interest from the media and we have been
overwhelmed by offers of support and
requests for participation.
Growth since 2014
We launched our pilot
innovation competition in
2014,with420studentsfrom
Middle School Affiliated with
Beijing Jiaotong University
participating.
As word of our competition and
student engagement levels spread, we
becameinundatedwithrequestsfromschools
to participate in our 2015 competition. This
year, we worked with 16 schools, 17,000
students and our friends at Education for
Sustainable Development (ESD) to run our
largest competition to-date. This was in
addition to a number of smaller competitions
earlier in 2015. This 16-schools competition
represented 33x more student participants
than 2014.
Developing young innovators
In order to motivate students to be really
engaged in the competition and come up
with some inspired ideas, we deployed our
successful WE Water Experience education
modules and Club activities in each of the
participating schools prior to the launch of
the competition.
These activities included visiting the
Gaobeidian Water Treatment Plant and
making Chinese Water Puzzles.
Designing creative solutions
Inspired by our education modules
and engagement activities,
our students then designed
and built their water-saving
innovations. These could be
suitable for application at
home or at school.
Stand-out innovations
included a transparent tap,
intended to remind users
of exactly how much water
they were using, which was
accompanied by a novel dispensing
system intended to reduce the amount of
water that leaves the tap. Another impressive
design was for a tap with several added
functions allowing the user to select from
three different options of water flow time.
Rewarding ingenuity
We held the final ceremony of our 16-schools
innovation competition on 30th November
2015, The students with the best innovations
were awarded trophies, certificates, as well
as electronic devices, specifically selected
as water-friendly products such as e-readers.
Looking to the future
Building on the momentum we have built
through our 2015 competition, we have
signed an agreement with ESD to roll out
this competition to 100 schools and 100,000
students across China in 2016.
In 2017 and beyond, we will expand this into
a global innovation competition, with the aim
of becoming the foremost global inter-school
competition, engaging students in water
conservation and developing a generation of
water-conscious young innovators.
33X
more students
than 2014

9. The total number of Thirst Club members to
date is 11,252, of which 68% are under 18,
while the remainder are between the ages of
19 and 22.
Looking ahead
In 2016 we will continue to expand our
Clubs programme, increasing the number
of activities available and growing our Clubs
presence in provinces outside Beijing, in
line with the growing success of the Thirst
Academy programme.
We are also in early planning stages for
hosting an entirely new event - the Clubs
Conference. This will provide our Clubs
with the opportunity to get together, share
their water-saving ideas and learn from
water experts through workshops and panel
discussions.Thiseventiscurrentlyscheduled
to take place in May 2016, to coincide with
Youth Day.
CLUBS
This year our Clubs programme has
continued to grow from strength to strength,
with more Thirst Clubs being established
in more provinces than ever before! We
now have 153 Thirst Clubs operating in 20
provinces across China. We exceeded our
target of 50 new Clubs in 2015 by 30%, and
established a total of 65 new Clubs this year!
We have reached 32,794 students with our
Club activities this year, which represents
9.6x the number of students as last year. We
have also organised 186 Club activities this
year - 4x the number of activities as 2014.
We are extremely proud of the results we
have achieved with our Club activities this
year, and the numbers clearly indicate the
increasing popularity of the programme.
Beijing is our strongest hub for Clubs, with
a total of 98 established. With the additional
resources continually being allocated to
our Shanghai office, our presence there
continues to grow exponentially, with a total
of 10 established Clubs in Shanghai to-date.
2XMore clubs
than
LAST YEAR
153Thirst Clubs
in 20 provinces
in China
Total Number of Clubs - 2014 vs 2015

10. 0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
Actual
Target
Oct Nov Dec
Shanghai
We now have established operations in
Shanghai with our team there under the
supervision of a member of our Senior
Management Team. In the last 6
months, we have achieved
incredible results, with a total
of 9,299 students from 25
schools graduating from
the WE Water Experience.
We have also established
7 new Clubs, with 2,065
students participating in
10 activities in the last
half of this year.
The Thirst Shanghai office
opened in September. We
spent the first month recruiting
and training interns, volunteers
and Ambassadors. This new team received
training from one of our most experienced
team members from the Beijing office, who
is now running our operations in Shanghai.
October marked the launch of our WE
Water Experience presentations in
Shanghai. Initially organising
presentations with the
British International School
of Shanghai and the
International Fashion
Academy, and then
reaching out to public
schools, we reached a
totalof1,529studentswith
our WE Water Experience
presentations in October.
We also established 1
new Club, with 720 students
participating in 2 activities.
Our highlight from October was attending
the Shanghai Philanthropy Partnership Day
event from 30th October to 1st November.
More than 60 public welfare enterprises,
200 social organisations, and 25,000
citizens attended the event this year.
During the 3-day long event, we
shared our messages of water
conservation by delivering
WE Water Experience
presentations to 1,530
people, and arranged
various on-site interactive
games, such as the
Virtual Water Guessing
Game. Over 1,000 people
visited our booth over the
3-day period.
In November, we launched the
Thirst Academy in Shanghai, and ran
training modules at Fudan University and our
Shanghai office with 25 Thirst Ambassadors
graduating from the programme.
A total of 2,447 students graduated from
the WE Water Experience programme in
November, we established 4 new
Clubs and arranged 6 activities,
including the Virtual Water
Guessing game, with 1,254
students participating in
this activity alone.
December was our most
successful month so far
in Shanghai, with 5,323
students graduating from
the WE Water Experience.
This incredible achievement
is a result of the hard work
of our team and the delivery of
programmes that really resonate with
Chinese youth.
9,299
Graduates from
Shanghai
3x
target
number OF
students

11. Expanding on our success on the Chinese
social media platforms, we are now actively
promoting ourselves on Western social media
such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Our aim is to create fun, interesting and
digestible content, with an emphasis on visual
media such as photos and infographics.
Due to the decreasing popularity of Weibo in
China in the face of new social media giant
WeChat, we have reduced our efforts on the
former, and increased our presence on the
latter. Our strategy is to post images of our
presentations and activities for students to
share with their friends, as well as interesting
articles regarding water conservation. We
have found that interacting with our followers
has enabled us to make significant strides in
increasing their engagement levels as well
as our numbers. We are extremely proud
to say that we have increased our WeChat
following by 316% since January 2015.
Traditional media
Along with our increasing social media
presence, we have also continued using
traditional media to spread our messages.
This includes utilizing both print and online
media this year. This year we also launched
our monthly newsletter, which currently
has 60 subscribers. Due to the nature of
consumption of media in China - which is
focused more on social media than more
traditional modes of consumption such as
email - this is currently an English language
newsletter. We plan to develop this into a
Chinese language newsletter in 2016.
We’re also excited by the rise of networks
in China such as LinkedIn, which have
the capacity to broaden our access to
different markets, and are looking forward to
continuing to expand our reach and leverage
our messages through the media.
Media
Leveragingourwaterconservationmessages
through traditional and social media is
important as it allows us to expand our reach
exponentially beyond the classroom
to a much broader audience.
Students, staff, volunteers, and
more generally those who
are interested in water,
have formed a network
of activists who create,
share and educate
through water related
content. It gives the
public an opportunity
to feel part of a broader
community, to have their
voice heard online. It also
gives us a chance to connect
with other water-focused NGOs,
promoting their content and forging
informal partnerships with environmental
groups all over the world.
As the vast majority of Chinese students
and the general public are active on both
Weibo and WeChat, these platforms
allow us to disseminate our photos
and videos from both our
presentations and activities,
as well as communicating
with our volunteers
and supporters and
highlighting opportunities
for further participation
and engagement. After
presentations, students
are invited to join our
network and engage with
us online.
Through the year we have been
actively increasing our presence
on social and online media, both in China
and abroad.
316%
more followers
on WeChat

12. Direct
Costs
inDirect
Costs
Financials
2015 has seen rapid growth of all of our
existing programmes, as well as the
development of a number of new ones. Given
the nature of our work, we find that most of
our expenditure is, as expected, allocated
to the payment of qualified and dedicated
personnel. Where possible, we try to keep
other costs to a minimum, for example, by
building long-term relationships with strategic
partners who provide us with products and
services.
Direct costs include all project-related
expenses, such as project personnel,
materials and transportation required to
deliver our programmes. Indirect costs
include financial and administrative staff,
office space and utilities.
Of our indirect costs, our largest costs are
for administrative and financial personnel,
as well as office space rental, at 41% and
35% of indirect costs respectively. When
compared with 2014’s comparable indirect
costs (8% and 48% respectively), it is clear
that we have made great strides in reducing
extraneous costs, focusing instead on
building a solid and dedicated team, enabling
us to keep many functions in-house and
thereby reduce our costs further.
Cost of impact
This year, we have reduced the direct
cost per person reached to $0.63. This is
predominantly due to the establishment of
the Thirst Academy, which utilises the power
of volunteer groups to reach students further
afield than our small team would be able to
reach without incurring significant costs. This
cost per person reached represents a 55%
reduction of cost of impact when compared
with 2014’s figures.
The Thirst Academy has proven to be
particularly effective in this area, with the
cost of impact being just $0.26 per person
reached.

13. Copyright © 2016 Thirst Limited