Breaking Habit into Helpful
I am not willing to openly admit how much time I spend on my phone every day. Though I would describe myself as a globally aware person, I will say that sometimes my face is too buried in a screen to pay attention to the important things — that sometimes I mistake proximity to relevancy, and that’s something that a lot of people have the misfortune of doing. It’s easy to keep your head down, like an oblivious amoeba that only has the limited capacity to deal with one personal problem at a time. But maybe that’s not the way a person should go about their life, uncaring and unaware of countries and people not nearly as blessed with the comfort of basic needs. Not that I have any authority to tell anyone otherwise, it’s only based on personal opinion that I say it’s time for people to lift their heads up.
Enter the UNICEF Tap Project, an initiative to raise money for children around the world who don’t have access to clean water. This is an immensely important issue that affects millions of people around the world, but isn’t necessarily given a second thought by those who are lucky enough to not have to think about whether their children are going to live past age 5 or, more often than not, die from a diarrheal disease.
The rules of the service were simple: for every 15 minutes you don’t use your phone, sponsors and donors of the initiative will fund one day of clean drinking water for a child in need.
This idea, thought of and executed by Droga5, was simple and brilliant because it leveraged existing behavior (people constantly on their phones) to focus on a larger social issue, one that wouldn't normally interrupt someone’s daily life. When there are selfies to post, emails to send, and friends to text, what is a child suffering thousands of miles away? The Tap Project brought the issue in a succinct and easily digestible form straight into your hands: if you want to do some good in the world, don't touch your phone. This set-up also made it incredibly easy for people to participate: you didn’t have to go out of your way to change the world and eradicate poverty, you didn’t even have to donate money. All that was asked was a sacrifice of 15 minutes on a device that, more often than not, detracts from your own standard of living. In that way, I truly see the Tap Project as a win-win.
This brand has not only provided a service, but it would have been a disservice to thousands of people had anyone not used it. Points to humanity, many people did use this service. According to the website, 5.4 years worth of water have been provided to those who need it. Since I’m a writer and not some sort of human calculator, I asked a friend to do the math: roughly 187,000 fifteen minute increments of no-phone time were donated. Whether that’s 187,000 people or there were those good souls who could live without their phones for half an hour or more, that number is still a difference made in someone’s life.
It’s these kinds of campaigns that make give me a sense of purpose working in this industry, and it’s my only hope that someday I can donate whatever fraction of creativity I have in these fingers to help anyone and everyone in this world.
