Legendary R&B singer and songwriter Smokey Robinson has launched a social media site called Smoke Alarm as a way of getting the word out on important issues of the day. What makes Smoke Alarm so powerful is the number of celebrity participants he has on board, including Elton John, Hillary Duff, Daryl Hall, Eva Longoria and James Franco, among others who pass these messages along to their Facebook fans and Twitter followers. The site currently has over 44 million subscribers. The first issue that Smokey is tackling is a great one, the challenge of providing clean drinking water to millions of people around the world who do not have it.
Legendary R&B singer and songwriter Smokey Robinson has launched a social media site called Smoke Alarm as a way of getting the word out on important issues of the day. What makes Smoke Alarm so powerful is the number of celebrity participants he has on board, including Elton John, Hillary Duff, Daryl Hall, Eva Longoria and James Franco, among others who pass these messages along to their Facebook fans and Twitter followers. The site currently has over 44 million subscribers.
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The first issue that Smokey is tackling is a great one, the challenge of providing clean drinking water to millions of people around the world who do not have it.
According to the World Health Organization, 1.6 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases (including cholera). This is attributable to lack of access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Of these illnesses, 90 percent are children under 5, mostly in developing countries. Additionally, schistosomiasis, a parasitic condition more commonly know as bilharzia causes tens of thousands of deaths annually and 6 million people go blind each year from bacterial trachoma and there are half a million cases of clinical hepatitis A contracted every year.
In order to impact this terrible problem, Smokey has pulled together an excellent team, with a unique strategy that seems destined to succeed. He sought out the help of David Clark Cause on the front end, to put together this campaign, which leverages social media in a very interesting way, to raise money for the project. On the back end, delivering their highly effective PUR water treatment packets is Proctor & Gamble. We spoke with Greg Allgood, the Director of P&G's Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) program last year about the program. Allgood refers to the water treatment packets as "a very effective mini-treatment plant in a packet. Even if the source is extremely contaminated, the resulting quality is comparable to what we drink here in the U.S. But they were made to be used where the need is greatest."
Smokey Robinson photo via Shutterstock.
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