Published in Forbes on October 13, 2011. Read the article here or below.
This Saturday afternoon, 100,000 Peruvian schoolchildren will collectively attempt to break a world record previously held by Bangladesh. In 25 regions of the country, in large cities and small towns alike, they will line up in their school courtyards and wait for a signal. As soon as someone yells, “En sus marcas, listos, fuera!” all 100,000 children will begin to wash their hands.
This event is one of thousands that will occur as part of Global Handwashing Day (GHD). Celebrated annually on October 15, GHD intends to educate the world about the importance of handwashing and encourage people to make it a habit. Last year, 200 million people and 700,000 schools are estimated to have participated in handwashing events around the world, in countries as diverse as Kenya, Japan, and Tajikistan.
Perhaps surprisingly, handwashing plays a vital – and often overlooked – role in disease prevention. Studies have found handwashing to cut risk of diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia by half, which otherwise kill a combined two million children a year. Soap is easy to find and affordable for most households. The real challenge is convincing people to use it on a daily basis.
Global Handwashing Day is an important effort in promoting that simple behavior change. It began in 2008 under the auspices of a public-private partnership for handwashing (PPPHW). Myriam Sidibe, Unilever-Lifebuoy’s Global Social Mission Director and co-founder of GHD, said the team essentially wanted to create a day with lots of press and a big global profile. “Having a dedicated day,” she explained, “really helps you talk about an issue and increase its visibility.”
The fascinating thing about Global Handwashing Day is the degree to which the private sector is involved. Sidibe was part of the team that created Global Handwashing Day, and other consumer goods companies, including Proctor & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, came on board soon afterward. “We worked hand in hand [with NGOs and multilateral organizations] for months,” said Sidibe. “We had conference calls every week. We designed the logo, picked the day, everything.”
The private sector seems to add tremendous value to this particular advocacy effort. Katie Carroll, Secretariat Coordinator of the PPPHW, said, “In the case of handwashing, the private sector brings scale, market access, and amazing marketing know-how. Donors also can’t match private sector ability to work on behavior change. Having that is really helpful to the rest of the organizations.”
The consumer goods companies’ engagement with social advocacy is a clear example of what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer deem “creating shared value.” In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, the authors discuss how businesses and governments have for decades created false dichotomies between economic efficiency and social progress. They contend that to remain competitive, sophisticated business leaders must reconnect economic success and societal benefits. Specifically, they must consider the latter to be “not on the margin of what companies do but at the center.”
How widely applicable is this concept? Is it feasible for businesses to promote social progress as strongly as, say, Unilever has promoted handwashing?
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