Even after moving forward, we are still behind in a small things. This World lack even basic hygiene standards. Sometimes the poor do not even get the things that we ordinary people never notice like our daily use soaps. It is so awful that people can not afford soap and sometimes resort to harmful hand washing techniques. Only 1% of households in the developing world have means of approach to soap.
This is a leading factor for about 14,000 child deaths under the age of five every day in 2019. While we are at war with a pandemic, a big part of the world still battles the demons of poor hygiene. An overwhelming proportion of these deaths are caused by entirely preventable illnesses, including diarrheal diseases, acute respiratory infection, and other infections that cause fever. Worldwide, 1.6 million deaths per year are attributed to unsafe water, poor sanitation, and lack of hygiene.
Samir Lakhani, a student of Pittsburg University, observe this during a volunteer trip to rural Cambodia in 2014. He saw a village woman using harsh and toxic laundry detergent to bathe her infant child. Affected by the helplessness of a significant chunk of the world population, Samir reached back to his hotel.While washing his hands, he notice that the soap bar had been packaged, shipped in, and nearly new—and it was about to be thrown away. The idea was pop up in his head suddenly.
“The thinking is simple,” says Lakhani, “No child should suffer from a preventable illness because there wasn’t any soap available. Part of the inspiration for the Eco-Soap Bank came from the work of Derreck Kayongo, a 2011 CNN Hero,” he adds.
Seeing it’s inception in 2014,Eco-Soap Bank by Samir Lakhani has been working to get to grip with the spread of avertible diseases caused due to aabsence of access to soap or further purityresources, they also work towards lessen the throw awayproduced from the hotel industry. The organization gather used soaps from hotels and guesthouses in various countries. These soaps are sanitized and ossify into new bars, and then the clean soap bars are dispenseto schools, health clinics, and village group. The distribution drives are combined with hygiene education programs to make people aware of the right techniques. Eco-Soap Bank also collects other materials such as shampoo bottles or other packaging materials that the hotels would usually discard and ultimately would find their place in landfills. The social establishment also generates employment lucky chance for women in poverty-stricken communities to give them a source of definitive income.
Since 6 years, Eco-Soap Bank has formed 16 recycling branches in 10 growing countries. It has united hands with 1,220 hotels and is working closely with 206 dispensations partners. A working team of 154 women has recycled over 1.4 million pounds of soap, come out in more than 9 million soap donations to schools, health clinics, and village communities. A population of three million has also received handwashing training from the organization. The non-profit organization is now working towards expanding its reach to other developing countries with high mortality rates associated with hygiene-related illnesses.
