More Wine, More Water

On the back of the success of the "Wine into Water" party that was held in October 2010, Kopernik supporters Adam and Ashleigh hosted another wine-themed fundraising event in Tokyo on Saturday, June 9th. The event raised JPY668,000 (US$8410) to support the Kopernik project Drinks are on me!, which aims to facilitate green technology adoption and create new business opportunities for poor women in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The previous event raised JPY660,000 to provide 54 units of Solvatten to a community in Uganda.

Despite Japan's rainy season kicking-in on the day of the event, over 90 people braved the downpour to join this event and support Kopernik. Kopernik's Co-Founder Toshi Nakamura and Japan Secretariat representative Hiromi Tengeji were also attending. The event was a great success and the money raised surpassed all expectations and will go a long way to ensuring the project in Indonesia becomes fully funded.

The money was raised through an attendee cover charge and a charity raffle, which offered some highly coveted and generously donated prizes, such as the rarest and highest performing car in the MINI line up for the weekend (and a dizzying array of MINI goods to keep), a night at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo and stylish Roberto Cavalli sunglasses to mention a few.

Biervana again provided a stylish venue and Bluesilver supplied event management support and free-flowing fine wine to help loosen the purse strings. Attendees were greeted by numerous cocktail tables elegantly topped with buckets of fine wine, an array of sumptuous food and well-chosen music that kept people dancing into the night. Most importantly, the attendees were well informed about how their donations are to be used following a presentation by Toshi. The highlight of which was when Toshi enjoyed a tasty glass of water straight from the Nazava filter, which only shortly before had been unappetizingly dirty!

It was a fantastic evening, a lot of money was raised, plenty of fun had, and many guests chose to end the night in true Tokyo style …with karaoke.