UNICEF Taps Into Smartphone Power
For many of us, ten minutes without our phones sounds like torture. For 768 million people without safe access to clean water, it probably doesn’t sound quite as bad. UNICEF is using that disparity to do a little good and raise a lot of awareness with the UNICEF Tap Project.
Participating in the Tap Project is simple, but it takes willpower. Participants simply visit uniceftapproject.org on their smartphones, click to begin, and go without their phones for as long as possible. The mobile website taps into device sensors to tell when they’ve been moved.
Each ten minutes someone goes without, project donor and sponsors fund one day of clean water for a child in need. And while the mobile site is open, it constantly reminds users why they’re leaving their phones untouched. It gives people facts about water, and how badly it’s needed. It offers messages of encouragement, records for cities, states and countries, and reminders of what’s being given up—the thousands of Facebook photos uploaded in that ten minute window, for example.
So far over 3.5 million people have participated, racking up more than 170 million minutes. Over 14 thousand people have volunteered for the project, and people are sharing and and advocating and helping however they can. All in the name of clean drinking water.
