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The next generation of Tweeters may surprise you. The desert village of Nimdivandh, Kutch Province, Gujurat, India. 16 December 2008.

Those of you attending the Twestival are caught in the tradewinds of our time, and that’s surely a great place to be.

In an era where many people seem terrified of change, and look back to a nostalgic recent past where everything was just great, the kind of people using Twitter know that the world’s only really just begun to take off. You all know that the world doesn’t need Powerpoint decks to share ideas, and it doesn’t need Word documents to explain plans. Sometimes it doesn’t even need plans. How many businesses are executing tidily against their carefully produced business plans of recent years?

That’s why I’m really excited about the fact that Twestival is putting the spotlight completely on water right now. Others have already talked here about the central importance of providing people with clean water (and proper sanitation should not be forgotten - the two are interlinked). But to remind you of the core facts, more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and over 2 billion lack adequate sanitation. This leads to disease and death, and means many people never get a chance to build a life. It is impossible to lift people from poverty without securing reliable drinking water. Nothing else, surely, matters more.

So it’s fantastic that 175+ cities will be hosting Twestivals on 12th February, and that they have chosen charity: water as their cause. charity: water are an exciting choice of campaigning NGO for them to be working with, as it’s making a name for itself through creative, inspiring money raising initiatives, such as the 2008 “Born in September” campaign. Founder Scott Harrison has made mainstream NGOs look slow and out of touch in the eyes of a new generation of donors by fronting memorable, focused campaigns that feature great video and photographic content. With charity: water people feel they are funding a real project, not just an organisation.

What comes next could be even better

You all know how Twitter gives people new ways to share deceptively detailed insights, updates and context on each others lives, work and networks. You think it’s powerful now? Wait a few years until every village and urban slum water project has its own Twitter stream.

Don’t believe it? Well it’s going to happen. Our team at Akvo is building the open source project back-end to make real-time streams of project updates possible, just like Twitter does today. If you think you can find ways to harness this for good, I want to hear from you.

You’re the people who understand how to use Twitter to drive change, create prosperity and solve problems. I hope Twestival inspires you to not just fund poverty reduction out of your own pocket but become the do-ers who reinvent how development works. Within a few years the way the world matches donors to do-ers can change in amazing ways. Flows of money can be eased by spending smaller amounts on vastly more projects, each having its own tweet-like reporting stream. Previously this kind of project matching and reporting has been impossible because it cost too much to do. Tools like Twitter change the fundamental economics. Good luck. Tell me what you want to do and we’ll support and follow you all the way.

Mark Charmer is a co-founder of Akvo. Read more on Mark’s take on Twestival+water on the Akvo blog here.

Follow him at @charmermark

Akvo founder and chief technology officer Thomas Bjelkeman will speak about Water and Twitter at the Stockholm Twestival. Follow him at @bjelkeman