Safeguard helps children wash hands properly
The hand washing facilities at Maozhuang Primary School in Dangshan County, Anhui Province.
Did you ever have to wash your hands in freezing water for over 20 seconds? Recently, Procter & Gamble brand Safeguard built a “Health Charging Station” with a hand-washing basin in Hangzhou, inviting residents to take the challenge.
The challenge is part of the “Spread Health across China” program which aims to help at least 100 million Chinese people to develop correct hand-washing habits before 2025. Every day, the brand provides hygiene education for more than 300 children living in China’s rural areas and offer them access to hand washing facilities.
“In fact, over the past 20 years, we have helped at least 80 million Chinese children to develop correct hand-washing habits, which fully demonstrates that Safeguard has a very long-term commitment to develop health consciousness among the people in China. Especially in schools in rural areas, there are no convenient facilities and clean water for local people to effectively wash their hands, so we helped them to build some, and meanwhile to carry out hand washing education,” said Paola Pocci, senior vice president of China Personal Care and Cleansing, Global Safeguard BFL and China Pan-Beauty ecosystem leader.
Safeguard's Paola Pocci says company is helping schools in rural areas by building convenient facilities with clean water for people to effectively wash their hands.
According to a survey on hand-washing habits during the pandemic by the research center of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Safeguard, only one in 10 people have proper hand-washing habits. As the pandemic eased, 76 percent stopped adhering to the hand-washing habits they developed during the outbreak.
Proper hand-washing is wetting your hands with clean, running water, applying soap and lathering well before rubbing your hands together for at least 20 seconds. In rural areas, pipes are frozen in winter and it’s hard for the children there to wash their hands in the proper way, not least for over 20 seconds.
According to Pocci, as of December 18 last year, Health Charging Stations had been established in 248 rural schools in 10 provinces, with 957 hand-washing devices installed for the benefit of 110,000 children. “Through research with our professional charity partner One Foundation, we keep upgrading the design of the hand-washing sinks to make them more suitable for the children’s hand-washing needs,” she said.
The “Health Charging Station” project is both online and offline. For every consumer joining the project, the brand will equip one more rural child with hand washing education and facility access.
