KARACHI - Reckitt Benckiser, in collaboration with four Pakistani brands, is setting up a company in Pakistan to initiate an awareness campaign aimed at controlling mortality of children and women in remote areas.
The key idea of the initiative is to empower rural women and provide them access to health and hygiene solutions which increases their quality of life. In addition to empowering these sehataapas, the project educates and reinforces the importance of a healthier and more hygienic lifestyle.
Project Hope, an initiative founded by Reckitt Benckiser engages women to empower them in a three-step approach. First is to educate women regarding health and hygiene door-to-door and in community awareness sessions.
The second is to provide them with cost-effective solution sat their doorstep in the form of hygiene products to complement this education.
The third is to empower them as agents of change while helping them earn a livelihood as they sell these products to households within their villages. This way these women not only become actively involved in making key decisions within their households and change agents for their communities. As a tool of empowerment and providing access to good hygiene solutions, sehataapas is carrying a basket of quality health and hygiene products door-to-door within their villages.
These goods include basic day-to-day hygiene solutions such as soaps, oral hygiene products toothbrush, toothpaste and toilet cleaning products. These products are given to sehataapas at cheaper rates so that they can earn a livelihood by selling these products to the households that they visit on a daily basis.
In the pre-scale-up phase, the project has been implemented in over 27 villages of Sargodha and Narowal districts and the results are positively surprising.
The objective also leads to ensure greater social and economic impact in a practical and sustainable manner. The success of the activity depends on the constant reinforcement of health and hygiene messages paired with the factors of affordability and sustainability which results in positive behavior change within the communities.
The project hopes to uplift the rural economy, which is sustainable and empowers rural women. It further promotes financial and personal independence for these women and empowers them as change agents for their villages.