To spread awareness about the importance of hand hygiene amongst children, RB India celebrated Global Handwashing Day (GHD) on October 15.

With its global campaign 'Give Life a Hand’, RB India’s personal hygiene brand Dettol is leveraging the digital medium to spread awareness about the importance of handwashing. Launched on October 1^st, the campaign emphasizes on the importance of a simple act of hand-washing with soap, and drive habit change, particularly among children because they are the most effective agents of change in society.

Largely led by digital, the campaign invites people to pledge their support for the cause by posting #handfie, which as the name suggests, is a selfie of your hands. To join the movement people need to click a picture of their clean hands and upload their #handfie.   

For every #handfie submitted by people on the campaign website or through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Dettol has pledged to educate 1 child about healthy hand-washing habits through school contact programs around the world.

The global campaign, spanning across 32 countries, saw school children from 11 countries coming together in a virtual relay. The ‘Global Handwash Relay’ began from Sydney and passed through Beijing, Dhaka, New Delhi, Karachi, The Middle East, Johannesburg, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, ending in San Jose (Costa Rica). Reiterating the message that washing hands with soap can help prevent diarrhoea and respiratory diseases and also reduce child mortality rates by about 50%.

Dettol’s #Handfie campaign is leveraging social media to raise awareness in an interactive and innovative manner. Last month, the consumer health and hygiene company RB India had announced a 5 year ambitious program in partnership with NDTV and Facebook - “Dettol – Banega Swachh India”. RB had made a commitment to invest a sum of Rs. 100 crores towards the initiative of making India healthier and cleaner by 2019.

More and more people are being encouraged to share #SwachhIndia pictures and the best ones will be aired on NDTV.

As part of the campaign, Dettol India’s has roped in celebrities to share their handfies on their Twitter page as well. Support of celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan and Karishma Kapoor further adds on to the campaign appeal.

The campaign has quickly gained momentum on social media with people tagging their friends and family members to post their #handfie and nominate others to pledge their support.