Just a Drop celebrates Earth Day with new partnership with Radisson Blu Hotels

Wednesday 22^nd April marks Earth Day – a global day which raises awareness about environmental issues and celebrates worldwide ‘Acts of Green’. Established in the United States in 1970, it is now celebrated in over 192 countries each year.

This year on Earth Day, one of World Travel Market’s official charities, Just a Drop is launching a special partnership with Radisson Blu, part of the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group.

As part of its Blu Planet programme, Radisson Blu will be supporting Just a Drop’s work to give children around the world access to safe drinking water through a towel re-use programme. Guests will be asked to consider re-using their towels during their stay in exchange for a donation to the charity. For every 250 bath towels reused, enough safe drinking water will be provided to a child for life.

To celebrate this, a number of Radisson hotels worldwide will also be holding ‘Walk for Water’ events, starting on Earth Day. The hotels will invite guests to walk for roughly 35 feet (10 metres) carrying ‘jerry cans’ full of water to illustrate the daily struggle millions of people around the globe face in their efforts to access safe drinking water.

Inge Huijbrechts, Vice President, Responsible Business at Radisson said, “We are really proud to instigate this global initiative to support communities that suffer a lack of clean drinking water and hope that this activity highlights to our guests and staff alike what millions of people across the globe experience every day in the search for clean water. We look forward to working with Just a Drop in the future to drive our group-wide water sustainability initiative, helping to save this scarce natural resource.”

Just a Drop provides clean drinking water and sanitation facilities to some of the poorest people around the world – helping them to transform their lives.  A child dies every 20 seconds from a water related disease.

People such as 47 year old Merry Makau, a mother of nine from Makueni County, Kenya.

Merry and her community helped to build a new sand dam thanks to support from Just a Drop. She explains the changes she has been able to make to her life thanks to it:

“Everyone was motivated to help with the dam construction and it took us eight days to complete. Now water is in plentiful supply and my home is just a 10 minutes’ walk to the river. I have enough time to take care of my children and also my farm. I water my banana trees and I am planning to venture into vegetable farming. I see a bright future with this water in this dam. It’s a complete life changer!”

So join us in celebrating Earth Day this year!

To find out how your company could support Just a Drop please visit our website or email Brendan.hanlon@justadrop.org

To find out more about Just a Drop’s partnership visit the Radisson Blu website.