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When Lifebuoy started over 100 years ago, it had one goal; make hygiene and health accessible to everyone. Fast forward to today and the Unilever social mission brand is still on that same mission of ensuring that the world has access to good hygiene, sanitation and health information.
Lifebuoy implemented the school’s hygiene programme, in collaboration with various entities around the globe, to teach good hygiene habits to school going children, specifically good handwashing habits. Through Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan, where Lifebuoy aims to help 1 billion people improve their handwashing habits by 2020.
They also run an annual Global Handwashing Day campaign where they have reached out to tens of millions of people across more than 30 countries.
Locally, Lifebuoy partnered with the Department of Health and the Department of Basic Education to provide hygiene and sanitation education to every grade one learner in 15 000 public primary schools. This project has proved widely successful, reaching over 2 million school children through the National Schools Hygiene and Sanitation Programme. This 5-year partnership wants to reach over 5 million children and teach them more about good hygiene habits.
They do not end with just teaching healthy hand hygiene habits, but they also donate new equipment to help keep up the newly learned habits at school. In 2019, Lifebuoy visited 5 schools where they donated 25 new handwashing basins in partnership with TopT. They also handed out Lifebuoy hygiene soap samples and pamphlets.
With studies saying that 60% of South Africans do not wash their hands after visiting the toilet or before they eat, even if they do, they do not use soap, it is important to teach good handwashing habits to the people especially children. Handwashing can reduce the rate of diarrhoeal infections by almost 50% and acute respiratory diseases by up to 25% in children.
Since 2010, Lifebuoy has educated over 257 million people across the world, including over 11 million South Africans, on hygienic handwashing to save lives. The Schools Hygiene Project still aims to reach out to even more school children to give them good handwashing habits, through collaboration with other organisations and community participation.
Through this project, we can help prevent the spread of diseases.When Lifebuoy started over 100 years ago, it had one goal; make hygiene and health accessible to everyone. Fast forward to today and the Unilever social mission brand is still on that same mission of ensuring that the world has access to good hygiene, sanitation and health information.