London, June 5, 2014: In a follow up to its award-winning film, Gondappa, Unilever’s health soap, Lifebuoy has released a compelling new film, Tree of Life. The aim is to support Lifebuoy’s Help a Child Reach Five campaign and spread the word about the importance of handwashing with soap. The film is the story of a mother’s love, loss and longing after losing her child to a preventable disease such as diarrhoea.
unileverThe film follows a mother’s journey of love, loss and longing through her unique relationship with a tree, that highlights the importance of handwashing with soap. Tree of Life is inspired by folklore and this moving story is used to dramatise Lifebuoy’s Help a Child Reach 5 campaign.
A year ago Lifebuoy adopted Thesgora, a village in India and through its handwashing programmes dramatically improved children’s hand washing habits so that they now washed their hands 2 additional times per day. This year Lifebuoy takes its life saving mission to Bitobe in Indonesia and has created Tree of Life to raise awareness of their important mission.
Every 15 seconds, one child dies from diarrhoea or pneumonia, diseases that are preventable through the simple act of handwashing with soap. That is 1.7 million children every year. Lifebuoy has taken its handwashing behaviour change programmes to 183 million people across the world, and now it is committed to change the handwashing behaviour of a billion people by 2015. This is part of Unilever’s commitment to help more than one billion people to improve their health and hygiene by 2020 under the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.
Samir Singh, Global Brand VP, Lifebuoy, “It is unacceptable that 1.7 million children die every year from infectious diseases when we have cost effective lifesaving solutions, such as handwashing with soap, readily available. We wanted to tell the world the Lifebuoy story in a deeply emotional way and turn the Help A Child Reach 5 campaign into something personal and powerful.” (Source: WASHPlus)