Sponsored Video - Lifebuoy Help A Child to Reach 5 Campaign

This is one of the most touching videos I have comes across on social media recently. Nothing can surpass the love of a mother for her child or the sadness of losing a child.






A crowd of villagers sits looking at the scorching sun. Waiting for rain, perhaps, and relief. Suddenly, a woman gets up and runs to a standalone tree near her house. Frantically, she splashes water all over it. To cool it down. Protect it from the heat, and even the cows. The next morning, her husband finds her sitting under it again, looking happy, as if in good company. She dances around it. Even offers it her food.  A tiny pink ribbon on the tree seems to be marking a certain height. Late into the night, her husband finds her making gifts at the foot of the tree. He asks her to go to sleep, for tomorrow is a big day. Looking at the tree he whispers, 'Tomorrow you turn five. Sleep well, my son.'

In Utari’s village in Indonesia, there is a tradition of marking a tree when a child is born. In such villages, thousands of children lose their lives before their fifth birthday to diseases like pneumonia and diarrhoea.

All that remains, as in Utari’s case, is the tree.

Lifebuoy is on a mission to help celebrate every child’s fifth birthday, by stopping the spread of preventable diseases which cause 5,000 children under five to die every day. How? By spreading the importance and health benefits of the simple act of hand-washing. Did you know? Washing hands at various points in the day can prevent many life-threatening diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia.

Last year, Lifebuoy adopted Thesgora, India and by teaching healthy hand washing habits, reduced incidents of diarrhoea from 36% to 5%.  This year, they will adopt Bitobe, Indonesia. As the world’s leading health soap, Lifebuoy aims to make a difference by creating accessible hygiene products (soap) and promoting healthy hygiene habits. With this in mind, Lifebuoy aims to change the hand washing behaviour of one billion people by 2015.

Do your part to help children reach their birthday. Share this video and Utari’s story on social media with #helpachildreach5

You may click on the following to get involved and do your bit:

Facebook

http://unr.ly/1khUntg

YouTube

http://unr.ly/1khUnti

Twitter

http://unr.ly/1khUntk

Lifebuoy Website

http://unr.ly/1khUIfq

[This post has been sponsored by Lifebuoy, but all thoughts are my own]

Sponsored Video: UNICEF and Domestos for Improved Sanitation

Let’s start with a fact, and a statistic that shocks. 

2.5 billion people live without access to safe toilets. That is two fifths of the global population (37%).

Very hard to imagine, is it not? 

Here is something to watch now. Please click on the video link below.

The video features children discussing toilet sanitation issues that they are faced with in their everyday lives. The video also works at another level. It educates. It teaches us viewers some of the main facts about safe toilets and how we can help improve the situation. It gives us a peek into a reality far removed from our own, but as real as ours nonetheless – a reality where 2000 such children die from diarrhoea every day. Yes, every day! 

It saddens one to think that while at one end of the evolution spectrum we have reached Mars, at the other end something as basic and as essential as a proper toilet is still missing in so many people’s lives.    

Thankfully, there are some among us who are taking these statistics seriously.

Access to improved sanitation has been deemed a basic human right by the United Nations. In keeping with this principle, Domestos and the Unilever Foundation have joined forces with UNICEF to help improve access to basic sanitation for hundreds of thousands of people, by supporting UNICEF’s Community Approaches to Total Sanitation (CATS) programme. 

What is CATS?

The CATS programme is a behaviour change programme targeted at whole communities but aimed at improving individual toilet habits. It helps in promoting good hygiene practices by spreading awareness about the sanitation crisis besetting the populations of the world. Through education and information dissemination, CATS works towards creating a demand for access to proper toilets – a catalyst for reducing disease transmission and saving lives. 

The CATS programme is now in action in 50 countries around the world. School children in countries like Ghana, Nicaragua and Sudan are being provided with sanitation, safe water and hygiene facilities. In Vietnam too, 600 community and local Government workers have been trained already on how to implement community and school led sanitation programmes. The CATS programme has improved the lives of 13.5 million people.

How does the programme work?

Domestos is contributing 5% of its average proceeds received from the sale of specially marked bottles of Domestos in select countries. Proceeds will go towards UNICEF’s CATS programmes in the Philppines, South Sudan and Vietnam and will also go towards improving sanitation in India, Indonesia and Brazil.

This partnership is just one of the actions Unilever is taking to help meet its sustainability goal of helping more than 1 billion people take action to improve their health and well-being.

How can we get involved?

Here is how - 

1. Share the video link given above. 

2. Help spread the word (via your social networks) about the toilet sanitation crisis, its effects on children worldwide and the UNICEF/Domestos partnership.

3. Tweet your support for the campaign. Use the hashtag  #mumsfortoilets 

4. Donate to UNICEF’s world sanitation programme here  http://unr.ly/18bdX1p.

Using a cliché – We can do our tiny bit. Can we not?

[This post has been sponsored by Unilever but all thoughts are my own]

Sponsored Video: Lifebuoy 'Help a Child Reach 5'

First things first! Please click on the video below and spend a few seconds listening to what Kajol has to say. Listen to it as a parent, a concerned citizen or simply as an observer.

You saw film actor and mother, Kajol, asking you to join her and support Lifebuoy’s ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ campaign.  And to be promoted is the simple habit of hand-washing, aimed at eradicating diarrhoea. While I cannot see your reactions, or know the take-homes that you grabbed from the video above and Gondappa's story contained within, I can tell you what I know.

Statistics Speak

Why a whole campaign revolving around hand-washing? The world over, 15 children die from diarrhoea or pneumonia every 15 seconds. Hand-washing, if done at key occasions during the day, is known to reduce the occurance of diarrhoea by 45% and pneumonia by 23%. That would mean saving the lives of over 600,000 children under five every year, which is actually the number of children who die due to diarrhoea or pneumonia in India each passing year. Significant numbers, isn’t it?

The Campaign

Having changed the hand-washing behaviour of over 130 million people, the world’s leading health soap, Lifebuoy, is now aiming even higher. Lifebuoy’s Hand-washing Programmes teach school children, new mothers and the community the practice of hand-washing with soap at key occasions, and in turn helping more children reach their fifth birthday. This intervention aims to contribute to the Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4) – that of reducing the mortality of children under five by two-thirds by 2015.

In order to work towards this goal, Lifebuoy’s ‘Help a child reach 5’ has adopted a village-to-village target approach, with the first one being Thesgora, Madhya Pradesh, with one of the highest rates of diarrhoea.

Kajol has become a part of this campaign to urge people for donations towards Hand-washing Programmes. In fact, this donation campaign was initiated with the release of the above film, where Kajol speaks about LifeBuoy’s award-winning ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ video.

Your Role

Most of the times, it does not take much to do our bit. Let charity begin at home first. Let us ensure that our children and family members maintain basic hygiene and make hand-washing a necessary habit, not just to prevent these two dreadful diseases, but so many others too.

We can also be a part of this campaign. We can donate towards this cause at www.youtube.com/helpachildreach5. The proceeds from the donations will go to Population Services International (PSI), a leading health organization. For every donation made, Lifebuoy will match the donation amount for its hand-washing programmes. Lifebuoy will also donate Rupee 1 to the programme every time the ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ video is shared online. 

A simple click of a button and we can ‘share’ the message of the video around - a message that may see so many children live to celebrate their 5th Birthdays.

Let’s do what we can, together.

Some related links:

 You Tube/Help a Child Reach 5

 Facebook.com/Lifebuoy

 Lifebuoy.com

[This post has been sponsored by Lifebuoy, but all thoughts are my own]