Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Happy Hand Washing Day!

My homemade organic soap
Our skin is covered with foreign material, mostly bacteria and dirt and not many people I know like being dirty! Therefore we use soap, not only to clean our skin but also to disinfect our surroundings and keep those ugly creepy crawly bacteria at bay. Soap has two main components, oils either from animals or vegetables and an alkaline solution that enables the process of soponification. It’s also easy and fun to make plus it’s 100% environmentally friendly. By using soap and water, hand-to-hand contact that can spread mild conditions, such as the common cold, but also more severe or life-threatening diseases can keep us all healthier. 

In the United States the combination of the flu and pneumonia, in fact, is the seventh leading cause of death. In Haiti, the act of finding water is often just the first problem to keeping clean. The second problem is that a bar of soap costs 12 gourdes or 28 cents. Now that may not seem like much to you, but think of this, most Haitians live on less than $2 a day, that’s 14% of their daily wages. That’s like paying almost $9 for a bar of soap! For $9 Haitian women that I teach can make 30 bars of soap! In addition, they don’t have to use valuable resources to cook the soap. It’s a total chemical process that happens with two ingredients and some water in any pan they happen to have. 

Please join me by clicking on the “Donate” button to buy the two ingredients they will be using to make soap, Not only will everyone around be cleaner and healthier… the women will be able to sell the soap to help pay for the food their families will eat. 

Happy Hand Washing Day!
Cholera bacteria
Areas affected by cholera in Haiti