top of page
ea29da_c47fe91f8ec8448b8dc800327c920915_mv2.heic

Our Story


“My motivation started when I was about eleven years old, and it came from me learning about the environment from my teachers at school. It got to the point when I really wanted to make an active change and I wanted to do something that could make a difference in the world. As I started to evolve these ideas, I started to realize that we have problems so close to home.”

- Jaden Smith

​​

Jaden Smith and Drew FitzGerald founded JUST Water, which demonstrated a more sustainable approach to bottled water. In 2016, after donating water to Flint with JUST Water, Drew and Jaden decided to engineer a solution that would provide water without all the plastic. What began as an experiment to come up with an alternative to single-use plastic water bottles in Flint became 501CTHREE, a new type of nonprofit for a younger generation focused on Energy, Food, Water, and Shelter. 501CTHREE brought together a team of passionate and experienced innovators to address the problems that climate change and resource scarcity have on communities of color. 

The programs that began at 501CTHREE continue at waterbox.org and The Water Genome

bottom of page