St. Paul immigrants found water bottle company to fight water crisis, in Africa and worldwide

Two friends from St. Paul bonded over their shared childhoods as immigrants from Africa — each surviving the global water crisis. Now young adults, they are working to fight the crisis by launching a water bottle company called Didómi, where half of all proceeds go to people in need.

Anaa Jibicho, 21, was born in Ethiopia; Lamah Bility, 24, was born in Liberia and immigrated to Guinea. They both moved to the east side of St. Paul as kids, where they lived in public housing and attended the same elementary school, bonding over their common roots — but only after getting into a fist fight first.

"I think I won," Jibicho said. "Yeah, I don't know about that," Bility said.

Over the years, the two stayed close, participating in the Twin Cities Boys and Girls Club and other local organizations.

But the water crisis that has left nearly a billion people without safe drinkable water still loomed in their lives.

'You still have to drink it'

Bility recalled waking up early in the morning as a child to walk nearly an hour with his cousins to get water, which they then used for drinking, cooking, bathing and tooth brushing, before heading to school and repeating the long walk afterward.

"Being able to go to America you realize that, man, we have a lot of things to be grateful for that we forget," Bility said.

Jibicho, the youngest of nine children, was born during the persecution of the Oromo people. He lost two siblings from water-related disease and became very sick himself before receiving treatment in Kenya.

"The worst part about it is that we knew it was the water but you can only protest for two days, and then afterwards, you still have to drink it," Jibicho said.

When Jibicho moved to California to attend Pomona College, he continued to be struck by the fact that something killing millions of people every single year was not being talked about.

He and Bility, who was finishing his studies at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, began brainstorming ways to help solve the crisis. Following their participation in the protests after the murder of George Floyd, they launched Didómi.

Didómi got its name from the Greek word meaning "to give." Their logo is a graphic of crossed fingers, symbolizing their goal of giving hope when they give water.

"The reusable water bottle market is growing, and a lot of companies are making a lot of money off this product without helping those suffering," Bility said. "We wanted to change that. We wanted to start something that can be of benefit to the user, and also be a benefit to the world."

Each water bottle purchased provides someone in need with 10 years of water access through a partnership with the nonprofit Water is Life. Half of Didómi's proceeds are used to build wells and increase access to water filters.

By the end of this year, they estimate that they will be providing 50,000 people with clean water.

And, after a months-long formal request process against some of the biggest reusable water bottle companies in the world, Didómi recently partnered with George Washington University to provide 26,000 water bottles to students, staff and the university community to transition from plastic to reusable bottles.

With this partnership alone, they will be able to launch initiatives in Guinea, Ghana and Honduras that will help thousands of people, said Bility.

"Minnesota brought us here and took care of us, and we wanted to take the lessons that we learned here ... to a wider scale," Jibicho said.

"We never thought that we would be able to provide this much impact in the world."