Matt Damon, Gary White

Do you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed by challenges in the world? It’s easy to become despondent and feel like whatever we do doesn’t have any real impact.

Today’s guests have been exposed to the challenges of poverty around the world and decided that, instead of becoming despondent, they would ask, “How can I help?” 

In today’s episode, we talk with Matt Damon and Gary White, the founders of water.org, a global nonprofit organization working to bring water and sanitation to the world. They want to make it safe, accessible, and cost-effective.

In today’s episode, we discuss how Matt Damon became a water warrior, Gary’s path to head up a global non-profit, how the donations get used, and the system they’ve created. We get to hear an amazing success story and so much more!

Let’s jump straight in!

Who Is Water.org?

Matt Damon is the co-founder of water.org & WaterEquity as well as an actor, producer, and screenwriter. In 2006, he founded H2O Africa Foundation to raise awareness about water initiatives on the continent. Matt’s active participation in the work of water.org & WaterEquity has positioned him as one of the world’s experts on water and sanitation issues. 

Gary White is the co-founder and CEO of water.org & WaterEquity. In 1991, he launched Water Partners, now the international NGO known as water.org. Today, he leads two organizations in creating and executing market-driven solutions to the global water crisis, driving innovations in the way water and sanitation projects are delivered and financed.

Both Matt and Gary credit their mothers for influencing them from an early age and inspiring them to be part of a giving culture. When you see a challenge, don’t just walk past it, try to solve it. 

As an engineer who is trying to make a social impact, Gary doesn’t look at a challenge like water and throws up his hands when he hears that 771 million people are without water and 1.7 billion are without sanitation. Instead of drilling wells that solve a few people’s challenges, he thinks like an entrepreneur and focuses on global solutions to solve the crisis with a dogged determination and innovation. 

Water.org is committed to continuously learning from people directly impacted by the challenges and constantly updating their insights from the people on the ground and turning those insights into new ideas. 

Water.org has pioneered things like WaterCredit: small loans with a big impact. Instead of feeling overwhelmed that there’s never going to be enough charity in the world to get everyone water, they use charity and philanthropy more smartly. 

Let’s hear how Matt Damon became involved.

How Matt Damon Became a Water Warrior

To understand how big a problem is, we first need to know exactly what the challenge is with water around the world and why Matt and Gary care so much about it. It first started for Matt when he looked at extreme poverty and asked the question, “How can I be of greatest service?”

“Water just underpinned everything. There are millions of girls who can’t go to school because their job for the family is to collect water. Without water, we’re dead. I was in Zambia in 2006, and a girl opened my eyes to this. It was the first time I’d ever done a water collection. I was waiting for this girl. She came home from school and we walked together to get water — me and her and an interpreter. I’m talking to this kid and I [ask], ‘Is this where you want to live?’ She started to get kind of shy and she [said], ‘No, I’m going to the big city of Lusaka [to] be a nurse.’” – Matt Damon

Matt connected with her because he remembered being 14 when he and Ben Affleck were going to the big city of New York to become actors. As a teenager, your entire world lies in front of you. 

Driving away, Matt reflected on this connection that he had to this kid and realized — had it not been for somebody having the foresight to sink borewell a mile from her house, she would not have been in school. (To sink a borehole is to drill a hole vertically into the ground to reach the water below the earth’s surface.) 

“She would’ve been spending her entire day trying to find water for her family. As it was, she had to spend about two hours to walk there, fill up these heavy jerry cans, and walk back. 300,000 kids under the age of five will die this year because they lack access to safe water and sanitation, but on the other side of it, there’s this whole opportunity lost. What are these lives that we’re not allowing to become what they could be?” – Matt Damon

That is a crazy amount of people dying just because of no access to safe drinking water and sanitation. However, even more people don’t get to live up to their greatest potential because so much of their time and energy is focused on having enough water. That was what pushed Matt to become involved in this work.

Let’s hear Gary’s journey to start Water.org. 

Gary White’s Key Insight for Water.org

There are many organizations out there trying to tackle the water crisis, but Water.org is different because they’re loaning people the money raised as opposed to building the wells themselves. Water.org’s philosophy is unique.

“There are a lot of people who are in such extreme poverty — they need that free well. But what we discovered is there are hundreds of millions of people, if not more than a billion — what they need isn’t just a handout. They know what water solution they want. They know there’s a water filter in the shop down the street that they want to buy. They know that there’s a toilet that would be right for them. They know that there’s a water tank that would be best for them. It’s empowering them to be able to procure the best solution that they want.” – Gary White

Water.org has identified that, while people may not have access to water and live in poverty, there are different levels of poverty. A one-size approach including handouts is not necessarily the right thing for both the beneficiaries and how to best use the donations raised. Water.org wants to recognize people who need a boost and empower them to solve their problems with the best solution they know works for them.

Water.org based their understanding on an analysis Gary did 15 years prior, which noticed that people in some of the poorest places in the world were already paying for water — but sometimes even that water wasn’t clean. 

“Sometimes they were paying with their time where they’d go stand at a community tap and have to wait for three hours, and they’d be taking time away from a job that they couldn’t do. What they were doing was paying every single day for [water and sanitation], sometimes up to 25% of their income. Gary had this idea that if you took the concept of microfinance that Muhammad Yunus pioneered in the Grameen Bank, you could apply it to water. It wasn’t a traditional loan because it wasn’t an income-generating loan, but it would be an income-enhancing loan because you’d be buying somebody’s time back and they could work those extra hours.” – Matt Damon

Gary’s critical insight turned into their pipe dream about helping people gain back their most important commodity: time.

“[The] borrowers are 97% women, and these loans pay back at over 99%! Some of the poorest people in the world, if you just give them a chance, if you nudge a market towards them, they will do the rest. And it’s like, we get out of the way, and these people solve their problems.” – Matt Damon 

Traditionally, to build a well, the cost to get somebody clean water for life is about $25. With Water.org, the money gets recycled and goes back out, meaning you can get somebody clean water for life for $5 because heroic women are, one after another, paying these loans back.

To date, Water.org has reached 43.7 million people globally.

Let’s take a closer look to understand how these loans work.