Unilever’s health soap Lifebouy released new film “Tree of Life” to support its “Help a Child Reach Five” campaign

London/Rotterdam, 10-6-2014 — /EuropaWire/ — 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.

The story of a mother’s love, loss and longing

Watch Lifebuoy’s Tree of Life film and spread the word about the importance of handwashing with soap.

The 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(Link opens in a new window) 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.”

You can watch the Tree of Life film on You Tube by following this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCwgKFttQ7M(Link opens in a new window)

For more information, visit www.youtube.com/helpachildreach5(Link opens in a new window)

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Notes to editors

To watch award winning film Gondappa follow this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7oU_YSbBQ(Link opens in a new window)

About Help a Child Reach 5
Help a Child Reach 5 is a global campaign launched by Lifebuoy that aims to reduce the number of children dying before they reach five years of age, through the active promotion of health and hygiene education.

The campaign was conceived based on research that 1.7 million children failed to reach their fifth birthday every year because of preventable infections , and promotes handwashing with soap as a simple action that can save 600,000 child lives each year.

About Lifebuoy
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. Since 2010 Lifebuoy has changed the hand washing behaviours of 183 million people across 16 countries.

For more information, please visit www.lifebuoy.com(Link opens in a new window).

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