The gooiest chocolate cake. The most life-like doll’s house. The fastest bicycle with training wheels! Parents go to the ends of the earth to give their child the perfect 5^th birthday. It truly is a moment for a party–a celebration of an important milestone in a young life.

However, not all parents experience this joy. The grim reality is that over 1.7 million children succumb to diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia before they reach their 5^th birthday.

Yet, most of these lives could have been saved by the simple act of washing hands with soap. And Unilever’s soap brand, Lifebuoy, aims help people to do just that. They are working to help more children reach their 5^th birthday by changing the handwashing habits of 1 billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America by 2020.

To achieve this, Lifebuoy launched a handwashing behavior change program in 2010 that promotes the use of soap at critical moments--like before eating and after going to the toilet. Promoting the benefits of handwashing with soap, it tackles the two most common causes of child death---diarrhoea and pneumonia–head on. We also created the ‘Help A Child Reach 5’ campaign to tell everyone about the lifesaving power of little bar of soap.

Watch one father’s superhuman effort to celebrate his son’s 5^th birthday in India, where every year, 380,000 children die before reaching the age of 5. Then share your support with #HelpAChildReach5.