In 2001 all 192 UN member states and 23 international organisations pledged their agreement on a series of eight international development goals - Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - which promised to provide the world's poorest nations with the urgent assistance they need to improve their social and economic prosperity by 2015. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, and fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS.

With ambitious international targets set, 2001 presented businesses with an obligation to intervene. There is a popular misconception that businesses create problems, rather than offer solutions to the biggest challenges to the world. However, consider this - MDG 4 sets out to reduce diarrhoeal disease that accounts for nearly 2 million deaths a year among children under five, making it the second most common cause of child death worldwide. Handwashing with soap is proven to be the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent these diarrheoal diseases occurring. So soap manufacturers must be an inextricable part of the solution.

Non-profits at local, national or international levels and their government counterparts can come up with action plans for change - carefully assessing the reality of situations on the ground and providing sound recommendations about what needs to be done. They know, for instance, that diarrhoea is responsible for 2 million deaths among under fives every year, and that the only way MDG 4 will be achieved is if this disease rate is eradicated. The private sector on the other hand, has the expertise, creativity, resources and ways of working that can accelerate progress against this target. As experts in affecting habits, marketers from the private sector are able to come up with innovative approaches that result in life-saving behaviour change.

Why do they do it? As the world is changing and becoming ever more transparent, consumers put companies under scrutiny and expect them to act. It's no longer business choice, its good business mandate. At the same time, businesses with savvy marketing expertise realise that intervening will benefit their bottom line - more people washing their hands with soap results in less diarrheal disease (accelerating MDG 4) but it also means soap manufacturers sell more soap, increasing their sales. Everyone is happy - public private partnerships in action create win-win situations that can provide the answer to the world's biggest problems, and reach corporate agendas.

Here is salt's entry to the UN's End Poverty 2015 Millennium Campaign poster competition