UNICEF’s Wearables for Good challenge — hosted by UNICEF, Arm Holdings, and Frog — found its two winners among 2,000 registrants and 250 design submissions. The key goal of the challenge was to identify the best products that can help fight infant mortality. One of the two winners is SoaPen, a wearable and portable soap designed to encourage children to wash their hands in order to improve hygiene and reduce their risk of falling sick.
Shaped like a crayon, the SoaPen comes wrapped in paper; more soap can be revealed as it gets used up. You can draw on the skin with the soap, creating a fun way to encourage kids to wash their hands. The package has illustrations to help parents understand the importance of hand washing. The soap has a loop of string that makes it easy to wear around the neck or tie it to the backpack so that its always available. The goal of SoaPen is not only to educate parents about hand washing, but also provide them with a tool to encourage children to wash their hands correctly and regularly with soap in order to protect them from various diseases ranging from common cold to pneumonia.
As a finalist, the team will receive $15,000 to further their research and development of the product, along with help from mentors from the event partners.
I would love to order this for my school teachers. I am a school nurse in Indiana, and often am involved in teaching proper handwashing to the students. Please add me to any email list where I may receive information about ordering SoaPens !! Wonderful product.
I don’t know of any sources for this yet; it’s a new project. At this point, your best bet is to contact the developers. Here’s a link to their contact form on their website: http://www.soapen.com/contact/.