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Having a baby is a joy unlike any other. A baby makes your life more beautiful, more colorful and much more worth living. For a mother each birthday of that baby is a milestone that she cherishes. I recently celebrated my daughter’s 5th Birthday with a wonderful party and her favorite theme but what made my heart the happiest was to see my tiny baby as a healthy and growing child.
But what if I told you that there are many moms in the world who only have a tree to call as their child because their children never made it to their fifth birthday.
Shocking isn’t it! But unfortunately that is the truth faced by scores of mothers in a village in Indonesia.
You might remember that last year I had talked about the Lifebuoy Help a Child Reach 5 Campaign and how it is helping villages world over to stop the spread of preventable diseases like diarrhoea by promoting the simple act of washing hands.
This year Unilever has created another moving and strong video in their Help a Child Reach 5 campaign called the TREE OF LIFE.
This is the story of Utari, a young village woman in Indonesia who spends all her time with a tree. Despite her husband’s worried looks, Utari spends her day talking to the tree, dressing it with sun catchers, playing around it and so on. Go on watch the video before I tell you what happens next.
It’s indeed saddening to know that the tree Utari devoted all her love and affection was in fact a memory of her child. In Utari’s village a tree is marked when a baby is born because since many children don’t make it past their fifth birthday,only a tree is what is left of them.
As a mother it just breaks my heart to see that a mother had to lose her child to a disease which is completely and easily preventable. 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.
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.
I wholeheartedly support this mission of Lifebuoy and want you to be a part of this movement too. You can get involved by
- Watching the above video and spreading the importance of handwashing to everyone around you
- Visit the to see the previous videos in the campaign
- Like Lifebuoy on and Follow them on to keep up with their updates
- Share the video and this message on Social media using the hashtag #helpachildreach5
This post has been sponsored by Lifebuoy but all thoughts are my own.
