Last year, I wrote about and gave to The Global Soap Project, brainchild of the handsome, brilliant, funny and irresistibly charismatic Derreck Kayongo. I called my post “Faith, Soap & Charity” and I liked Derreck so much, I did a video interviewing him and sent it to Oprah in the hopes that she would put him on her show. Apparently, my interview technique didn’t quite do him justice, but ..

Derreck, sending 2.5 tons of soap off to South Sudan!

It turns out that the CNN Heroes program has found him quite irresistible, too, and nominated Derreck for its ultimate prize.

So today I’m asking you to take 20 seconds, click on this link, and cast your vote for Derreck and the Global Soap Project. If he wins, Derreck will be granted $250,000 for his quest to convert the 2.5 million bars of hotel soap we cast off every day, and make something clean, fresh and life-saving out of them.

You see, soap is the first line of defense against acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases, especially in children under the age of five. And good hand-washing can reduce those diseases by 40-60%!

The Ritz is in ... are you?

With Global Soap Project’s reconstituted, spanking new soaps, Derreck Kayongo is blowing tiny bubbles of hope in the scourge of poverty and disease in refugee camps across Africa. And that gets my vote every time!

(You can vote up to 10 times a day — which I think is kinda bogus of CNN, quite frankly. Whatever happened to One Man, One Vote??? This must be a new Citizens United by-product …but I digress)— Click to vote repeatedly, right here!