Sachin Tendulkar, UNICEF Goodwill Regional Ambassador for South Asia for South Asia with Nine is Mine children spreading the Team Swachh message for making India Open Defecation free

The initial focus of the collaboration in India will be to improve sanitation. With the largest number of people still defecating in the open – more than 564 million – poor sanitation can cause diarrhoea, which accounts for more than 300 deaths in children under five years every day in India. This partnership will strengthen the Team Swachh campaign conceptualized by the UNICEF-WASH United alliance.

And this is where Team Swachh will swiftly move into action, to try and make a difference, and help inspire people to initiate a change at the ground level, to make the journey from apathy to concern and taking action. It will endeavor to cut across urban and rural populations, class, gender, age, region and religion to help make India a clean nation where everyone uses a toilet. The idea of team and team play is at the core of the Team Swachh initiative. And it starts with the power of cricket teams and the ICC World Twenty20 India 2016. For the event teams and any other team to be successful, all the different members – different players, coaches, doctors, etc. have to work together to achieve their goal.

Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, remarked. “Similarly, ending open defecation-achieving sanitation for all in India, takes a genuine team effort in which all relevant actors – from the Government of India to people practicing open defecation, from role models to international development partners - play together as one team.” The Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Anurag Thakur, commented: “Team Swachh presents a creative and collaborative platform to make the nationwide movement a resounding success. The ICC World Twenty20 India 2016 will bring together the collective efforts of the BCCI, ICC and UNICEF towards the mission with the help of awareness programmes.