P&G raises awareness of global water crisis

In a bid to raise awareness of the global water crisis, Procter and Gamble (P&G) employees embarked on a six kilometre charitable walk on 21 October 2011 at the Johannesburg Zoo. The walk, themed "Carry each other 6K walk for water", is symbolic of the average distance women in developing countries walk to gather water for their families each day.

This initiative is taking place at more than ten sites across the globe and is underpinned by the P&G's Children's Safe Drinking Water programme (CSDW) - a non-profit initiative focused on the critical, global need for clean drinking water. The programme supports some of the 800 million people globally who do not have access to safe drinking water and more than 4 000 children who die every day from diseases caused by drinking unsafe water.

The walk is sponsored by P&G beauty brands in partnership with P&G CSDW Programme to help women and their communities, while supporting CSDW's goal to 'save one life every hour' in the developing world by providing two billion litres of clean water every year by 2020. For every employee that participated in the walk, the brands have committed to provide a year's worth of clean water to a woman in the developing world and her family.

Global statistics emanating from the work done by the CSDW project reveal that women spend 40 billion hours hauling water, while in Africa, an average woman walks six kilometres a day to collect water and more that 50% of deaths of women with HIV/AIDS in Africa are caused by diarrhoea.