If you are a regular on the social networking scene, we’re sure you must have already seen glimpses of the LifeBuoy Help a Child Reach 5 Program on your social network page’s news feed. But what you perhaps didn’t know so far is that the seemingly silly video and the pictures from the campaign are actually celebrating a rather stunning statistic for the bloke in the images and the video who is named Gondappa. The campaign follows the story of this guy who is ecstatic about his son’s 5th birthday. Sure, it is a bit of a landmark for kids but why is this guy over the moon? Well, the kid that just turned 5 is actually his first child to survive to that age as he has lost a number of others to diseases like diarrhea.
That’s right folks. The disease that you think people only got from eating restaurant food gone bad is actually the second biggest cause of death in children under the age of 5 around the world. The saddest part about this statistic is the fact that more often than not, the disease can be prevented by an act as simple as washing hands with an anti bacterial soap. Before Unilever co-founded the Global Handwashing Day program in 2008, over 1.1 million children around the world died each year from diarrhea caused by a lack of proper handwashing.
However, in the five years that the program has been active, over 600,000 children have been able to cross the age 5 landmark which makes this simple initiate quite a lifesaver. The best part about the campaign is that anybody can contribute to it. All you have to do is to simply pledge your support for the program through your social networking page and spread awareness. And trust us, when you see a picture of another dad jumping for joy ‘cause his kid survived to see his fifth birthday five years down the line because you “liked” a page on Facebook, it would certainly feel a lot better than having shared cat videos from YouTube!