IN our household, there are jars of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly everywhere—the bedrooms, the living room and the bathroom. It is my mother’s cure-all for anything and everything from dry skin and parched lips to skin allergies and chafing.
Thus, I was happy to hear about The Vaseline Healing Project, a global initiative that has reached 2.4 million people across 41 countries, including the US, Ecuador, South Africa and India. For The Vaseline Healing Project, the brand teamed with global humanitarian-aid organization Direct Relief to help provide product donations, healing missions and training programs to critical areas and help people in emergency situations.
Vaseline and Direct Relief believe that providing the right personal-care products can go a long way in instilling dignity and confidence in those living in the wake of crisis and disaster, so that they can go back to work or school. The Vaseline Healing Project came to the Philippines in 2015, in response to aid efforts required by thousands who lost their homes during Superyphoon Yolanda.
Together with Direct Relief and local partner IPIF, The Vaseline Healing Project extended medical assistance in the form of a medical mission and distribution of Vaseline products to hundreds of residents living in the resettlement areas, where medical assistance was provided for patients who had developed skin problems, such as dermatitis, impetigo and fungal infections.
Some people raise their eyebrows when those affected by calamities and armed conflict ask for items related to vanity. When someone asked for donations of lipstick for the teachers of Marawi, I remember getting into an argument with someone on whether wearing makeup was more important than survival.
Makeup is, of course, less important than living, eating or having a roof over your head, but lipstick has the power to restore your spirit, even if this effect is just temporary.
It is not bad to be vain even when you’ve lost your home. Excessive vanity may not be proper in the face of disaster and death, but there’s nothing wrong about wanting to be clean and presentable.
Through Vaseline’s partnership with Direct Relief, The Vaseline Healing Project aims to help heal the skin of millions of people through different means, such as:
- Donations of Vaseline products to be distributed to Direct Relief’s existing global network of hundreds of clinics and hospitals around the world, as well as placed into a variety of relief kits, such as midwife kits, emergency medical backpacks and emergency hygiene supply kits for displaced families.
- Medical missions to treat patients in resource-poor communities who lack access to medical interventions, or who are recovering from natural disasters and other emergencies. For many of the patients treated on missions, this will be the first time they have had the opportunity to receive dermatological care in their lives. Other doctors and specialists are also provided by The Vaseline Healing Project, and all treatment and prescriptions are provided to patients for free.
- Initiating and developing training for community health workers to help expand knowledge for rural communities to correctly diagnose and treat skin conditions.
- Witness The Vaseline Healing Project at work: https://bit.ly/2sX0ASl.