About eleven years ago, we were in Haiti and I was introduced to a little girl who was thirteen. She spent three to four hours every day collecting water. So I say to this kid, I'm like, well, hey, you know, I kind of joke and say, now you have more time for homework. And she looks at me totally seriously, and she's like, I don't need more time to do homework. I'm the smartest kid in my class. And I said, all right, well, so what are you going to do
with all this time that you just found? You your new found four hours a day. And she looked at me and she goes, I'm gonna play. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, I know that our community add on Purpose. All of you are activists. Our community is dedicated to making positive
change in the world. I know that all of you have got behind so many causes that we've prioritized and given a platform too on this podcast, and this is one of those episodes. So if you've been looking and waiting to do something positive in the world, to feel like you're a part of the solution. Then I want you to listen to this episode. I want you to share it with all your friends and family that are of the same energy and spirit, because this one's going
to make a huge difference. Today I'm sweeking of two incredible guests, Gary White and Matt Damon, who are co founders of water dot Org and Water Equity. While everyone knows Matt as an actor and producer and screenwriter, in two thousand and six he founded H twenty Africa Foundation to raise awareness about water initiatives on the continent. Matt's active participation in the work of water or dot org and Water Equity has positioned him as one of the
world's experts on water and sanitation issues now. In nineteen ninety one, Gary launched Water Partners, now the international NGEO known as water dot Org. Today, he leads two organizations in creating and executing mark driven solutions to the global water crisis, driving innovations in the way water and sanitation projects are delivered and financed. Welcome to on Purpose, Matt Damon and Gary White. Matt and Gary, thank you so
much for being here. And I know today we're talking about your book, The Worth of Water, our story of chasing solutions to the world's greatest challenge. I highly recommend everyone goes and grabs a copy of the book while you're listening or watching, but we will be diving into that and discussing it. Gary and Matt, thank you for being here. It's so good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for sharing your incredible platform with us too. This is really awesome. We appreciate it for sure.
Thanks jay No, thank you for doing the work. You know. I spent three years living as a monk in India after business school, and a lot of the work we did was around building sustainable villages and a big part of that was making sure that clean water reach those places. So I have a personal affy to the work that you're doing, and so when this came across my desk, I was, to be honest, just super enthusiastic and excited
to talk about it. I'd love to start off from both of you individually telling me about what is the water crisis and water issue right now for those who are unaware or those that have kind of seen it but kind of think, oh yeah, like isn't aren't. There are a lot of people dealing with that, and you know, it's kind of been talked about for a while. I'd love to hear from both of your perspectives personally as
to what you believe the issue is right now. Well, if I can go ahead and jump in, that's all right. It's it's so complex, it's kind of hard to distill it it. I'll give it a shot. I think that for us, we tend to think of the water crisis is something that's looming. We know that, you know, a climate change, water resources are getting more scarce, and that is a looming crisis, and it is important we should
be focused on that. But for seven hundred and seventy one million people around the world today, the crisis is already upon them. Right. They're the ones that when they woke up this morning, they didn't necessarily know where they
were going to get water for the day. They didn't know how much time they were going to have to spend walking to collect that water, or sometimes they have to buy it from these these urban slum vendors who sell it for prices that are ten to fifteen times more than what they would pay if they had a water connection. So to them, the water crisis is a daily struggle to make sure that they have enough water
in order to kind of live the day. And then when you're struggling day to day like that, that water crisis becomes like a family health crisis, it becomes an education crisis, it becomes lack of employment crisis because your focus so much on getting water or paying for water that you're not in school, you're not healthy, and so it is basically something that's right now robbing hundreds of millions of people of their futures because until you have water,
nothing else matters. Thank you for that, Gary, I really appreciate that. And the main thing that I'm hearing there is just we think of people just not having water to drink, and then it's almost like, well, wait a minute, let's think about the act of getting water and what that takes away time from i e. Their economic space, their home space, their family, the cooking, the feeding that, you know, everything that it expands out to. So thank you for that. I want to extend the same question
to you as well. I'd love to hear about for you personally, what you see is the issue so well, I think Gary just did a pretty good summary there. But to follow on to that, I would just say that the effect of that, right, leaving aside the needless disease and death right that occurs when you don't have access to clean water and sanitation, you know, because we're losing a million children under the age of five, you know, to every year to completely preventable illness, right and and
and so that's its own tragedy, right. But but when you look at the other effects of not having access, namely, you know, because this disproportionately affects women and girls. Uh, so many girls aren't in school because they they have to for the sake of the survival of their families, be out looking for water every day and so and so you can imagine what that does to the to the outcomes of their of their lives and to their potential. So it's not only this this needless disease and suffering.
It's it's also robbing people of their potential in ways that are really incalculable. Um. And that was the very first water collection I went on. Um this is fifteen sixteen years ago, and I was in Zambia in this really rural village and and I was it had been arranged for me to meet this girl when she got home from school, and we walked together to this well and and and I talked to her. It was about a mile away. And in the course of our conversation, I said, you know, I said, are you going to
live here for the rest of your life? Is this where you want to live? And she got really shy and she goes, no, No, I don't want to live here. I want to go to the big city. We're in this really rural area that she goes, I want to go to Lusaka. I want to be a nurse, right, and and I totally just connected to her because I remembered being fourteen and I was going to go to the big city with Ben Affleck and we were going
to be actors. We were going to New York and and uh and that's like what a fourteen year old should be thinking about, right, They should be dreaming about
their futures and the possibility that awaited them. And it wasn't until I got in the car and was driving away that I realized, had it not been for the foresight of someone to sink a borewell a mile from this kid's house, she wouldn't have been in school, you know, she wouldn't she wouldn't dream of someday being a nurse and contributing to the economic engine of her country, and and and and helping people, you know, being a health frontline healthcare worker, you know, all the things that and
living her dream really right, and so and so that was kind of an epiphany for me. And and and just the far reaching effect of lack of access, because I really found that it underpinned everything, It undergirds every issue of extreme poverty, It touches all of them. And so the fact that nobody was really talking about it, and it was this vastly interesting and complex thing, massive problem that that was what first got me really interested. Yeah,
that's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think there was a line in the book that really struck me. And you said that for that girl, water was life, and it was also a shot at a better life. And when you make that comparison of what you were thinking about at fourteen, what she's thinking about at fourteen, now I'm thinking about what I was thinking about at fourteen. And I would encourage our listeners
and viewers right now. And Gary, I'm sure you've thought about this many times, but I'd like everyone who's listening and watching to think, what were you thinking about at fourteen? What was your choice that you were having to make?
And you just realize how far off it is from someone who doesn't have access to water and clean water, and that just makes you start pause and think and go wow, Like I may think I may not have this opportunity, or I may not have enough money to move to a city, but it's like here we're talking about not even having water and clean water to have access to, let alone all those choices. One thing that comes to mind, and I want to hear this from both of you because you know this has been work
that you've been doing for a number of years. This is not something that you know, both of you've just got involved with. Then you know it's it's it's your life's work. It's it's it's something you're truly passionate about when you first saw the pain for both of you, when you first when I hear those numbers, seven hundred and seventy one million people, is that right? Did I get that a number? Right? Gary? Like seven hundred and seventy one million people you know don't have access to
clean water. When I'm hearing Matts you share the statistic just right now, we're losing a million children at Yeah. When I'm hearing those numbers, they are so high, right, they're astronomical. I hear a lot to people when they're exposed to that much pain. Our natural inclination is to feel like we can't do anything, And our natural inclination is to feel a bit helpless, to feel sad, to feel disheartened. We feel like our empathy takes over and
we go, well, what can I do? When you first saw that, what gave both of you the feeling a that you had to do something, but be that what you do could make a difference. Let's start there, and then I'll follow up with another question. Let's start there, and Garrett, you can go first again. For us, I came at it from a kind of an almost analytical
perspective after I had that emotional response to it. Right, So, when I was in Guatemala as an undergraduate, you know, in university, doing a volunteer project there, just seeing this girl going and collecting this filthy water out of a drum, you know, in the slums, and walking back through this sewage filled lane that that to me was one person, right, and then coming back and then learning that this was the story for hundreds of millions of people, I didn't
get discouraged. I just like could see that one person and it's like, okay, if we can just kind of tackle this, you know, even one person at a time, that was kind of the idealistic view of it. And and so to me, what's been important about this journey that we kind of chronicle in the in the book is that you know, you have to have that in goal in mind, and that can be daunting to see that.
You know, our vision is that everyone in our lifetime, you know, has access to say water, and that the challenge that becomes to match the scale of the solution to the scale of the problem. Right, And I knew that philanthropy alone wasn't going to be that solution. Philanthropy has a role to play, but it was only by
traveling in meeting women who were in these circumstances. I met a woman in India who had gone to a loan shark and was paying one hundred and fifty percent interest to that loan shark just so she could build the toilet that she wanted other people who are doing this to taking out loans for water connections at exorbitant rates and then using those insights and saying, well, what if you know, we could turn the problem around and look at like getting these people access to these small
loans what we now call water credit that would then unleash them to get the solutions that they wanted. So I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but my point is that you just have to take the problem a step at a time and find a solution that's there, evolve it, get the insights, and move on, and that is the journey. And I think that's one of these kind of the subplots I guess of the book is that any of these seemingly intractable, big social problems do
have solutions. If you're tenacious, if you innovate, and you work hard at it, you believe that we can get there. Yeah. That's I would just say it's interesting because because I had the exact same kind of reaction that Gary did, which was to say, Okay, well, I'm this is a this is a complex issue, and I don't understand it entirely, but I know that if I raise money, if I create an organization and raise money and start start doing
his direct impact. We're building wells, right, I've seen the power of one well, so if it if a thousand people have access to that one, well, then I've helped a thousand people. So why don't I start there? Why don't I just start moving forward? Why don't I start as Gary's you know, take that first step. I don't know where the road is going, but I know I'm not getting there if I don't start walking. And so so that was what and so I did, I'm sure
incredibly naive things. And I didn't you know, and and Gary, you know when we met in the two thousand and eight Gary, you know, we talked about in the book, Gary led with all of his failures, right, which was an incredible attractive thing, incredibly attractive thing to me because I think that is how, you know, we can't be afraid of failure, We can't be afraid of you know, that can't stop our momentum, right, And it's how we learn,
and it's how we grow um. And and and so I I knew that I had to partner with somebody who had a more sophisticated understanding of of of this issue, and I looked around for the the best person available and uh and when they would not take my call, I found Gary, So no I and and and that was really the one thing that I did, and this all of this work, that was really I'm really happy that I did that. It was that it was really one of the smartest choices I've ever made in my life.
And because of this water credit that Gary is talking about, which was this idea that that came from his experience and his lifetime of experience of being in these communities and talk to people and understanding what life was like. He also understood that people in the poorest communities were paying for water. They were already paying for it, and in most cases paying way more than the middle class, way more than the people staying in the fancy hotels,
you know, who take it totally for granted. They weren't connected to the infrastructure and as a result, their life was built around trying to get it. And uh. And so that insight led him to this hypothesis that these loans could actually be paid back quite easily. And that's what you know, forty three point seven million people later, you know, these loans have paid back at over ninety
nine percent. So it's really the book is really us trying to bring the story of these women because you know, you know, over ninety percent of our borrowers or women and this kind of incredibly heroic women like an individual with you know, one by one by one, you know, to the tune of millions and millions of them have paid these loans back at at over ninety nine percent. And it's just a it's a beautiful story and it's and it's about philosophically how we feel about about trying
to help. It's not a kind of paternalistic here's your solution, You're welcome. It's like it's going into the communities and and and and listening and then ultimately nudging a market towards people and letting them solve their own problems. And that's what we've seen happen now over forty three million times. And that's really cool. Yeah, that's that's an incredible impact. And I love the way you're thinking about it and the idea that there isn't just a one size fits
all solution. It's not about throwing money at it. It's actually giving people the tools and the skills and the abilities, as you've rightly said, to solve their own challenges so that they feel empowered in the process rather than dependent
again on another outside source. In another way, I mean, can you expand more for those who don't know how the lack of access to water impacts girls and women's more than boys and men, and and when you uncovered that tell us some of the reasons, because I don't know if everyone knows why or how that exists as a discrepancy, but also tell us some of the stories of some of the women that you've worked with as well.
Women and girls have been the ones and families that have been charged with collecting the water for their households almost universally around the world. So they obviously have the greatest stake in this, and the greatest stake in trying to find a solution, and the greatest stake in ensuring that that solution is sustainable. And that to us, you know, is like an insight, that's an observation. So it's like, well, let's how are we going to shape our solutions to
meet their needs? And that's why you know, more than eighty five percent of the borrowers under our water credit program are women, and so they're the ones that are repaying these loans at a ninety nine percent rate, and they are the ones that have even more incentive to make sure that if something breaks down, that it gets repaired. And I think that's one of the beauties of water credit as well, because oftentimes water projects do break down.
You know, some of the statistics are that about half of the water projects fail after five years. And if you have access to an ecosystem of finance for water and sanitation, not just a one and done grant, but you can access a micro loan to go get the the you know, solution that you need to fix you know,
your your your water tap or whatever. That is an important part of the whole model and giving people you know, we talk about, you know, not necessarily seeing people living in poverty as a charity problem to be solved, as
much as a market to be served. And in order to kind of make the market work, we have to kind of nudget towards the poor, which is what we do with with water dot org to help, you know, get microfinance institutions that we partner with around the world the to de risk this for them because it's a new thing to loan for water and toilets, and they're
not quite sure how it works. So we can use our philanthropic capital to kind of help them do market research to design these loan products so that they can go out and make these forty three million loans that have happened so far. And that is kind of the concept. And you know, one way to just boil it down with a story, right A woman I met in the
Philippines recently. Her name was Lunadiza, and she was paying sixty dollars a month to a water vendor who was selling water off the back of a truck, not even good quality water. And she took out a loan from one of our partners, and her loan repayment her payment each month is five dollars. Her water bill each month is five dollars. So right there, you see fifty dollars back in her pocket. I mean, think about you know, when you're living in poverty, fifty dollars is a lot
of money. You can now work to get your kids into school. You know, you can now afford the medicines that you might need for your for your family. You can invest in your future and build a future. And I think that's what we're trying to help people unlock, and that's whose stories you know, we're fortunate to be
able to tell in the book. Yeah, Gary, that what I find fascinating there, Matt, just before we come to you that how have those obviously those water vendors who are not selling the clean water or the best word, they've built up a certain level of authority and control and these markets, and like how is that is that being dismantled as well by you doing this work? Like
where where are those people? Like? Kind of because I feel like that is so difficult obviously if you're not if you haven't traveled to these countries, it's hard for people to understand how that even works. But but that kind of like authority, influence and power and control, how are they reacting to the dismantling of their economies? Because I'm sure that there's you know, conflict or pain back
from that side, Like how does that all work? Sorry if it's an ignorant question, but it's just no, no, no at all. And I think that I guess one thing to understand is that even they are not making a fortune off of this system, right, It's uh, it's just really expensive to find water, to put it in a truck, to buy the diesel, to drive the truck
around and distribute it. I mean, the efficiency of that versus doing it through a pipe is incredible, right, So it's no surprise that they have to charge those amounts. And so yes, there's going to be dislocations there with with some of these vendors, but we haven't seen that crop up as a problem. You know, it happens incrementally.
You know, everybody in the world is used to kind of having to reinvent themselves, and so I think that you know, they might go on to other businesses and you have tanker truck water that's needed for construction site still, so they can kind of adjust to those types of markets. But that makes sense, and that what about you? Is there a particular story? I mean, there's plenty in the book, but if if there's someone that comes to mind, now where you know you saw women being more negatively affected
by this than men. Obviously we've got the answer of why from Gary, But is there a particular story that stands out or an experience in that direction. About eleven years ago, we were in Haiti and at a we kind of were there for the kind of the christening of this new water system in this small village, and
it was a real celebration. And amidst this celebration, I was introduced to a little girl who was thirteen, and you know, she and I got her story, and her story was that she spent three to four hours every day collecting water. And she was very lucky because that was she could still be in school. But after school, every day she went and she collected water. Took her three or four hours to get water for a family.
So I say to this kid, I'm like, well, hey, you know, I kind of joke and say, now you have more time for homework, right, And she looks at me totally seriously, and she's like, I don't need more time to do homework. I'm the smartest kid in my class. And the way she said it, I knew she was telling me the truth. I was like, oh, I remember being thirteen, and like, I remember you in my class.
You are this one. And uh And I said, all right, well, so what are you going to do with all this time that you just found that, you know, your your new found four hours a day. And she looked at me and she goes I'm gonna play. Wow. Yeah, and I just in it. But it like buckled me, you know, I because at the time, my oldest daughter was thirteen, and you know, so again I felt that connection to this kid and like, what else should a thirteen year old girl be thinking about, you know, she should be
thinking about playing? And that's you know again another one of those incalculable ways in which this is so pernicious, right. It just robs people of you know, in this case, it robs children of their childhoods, you know, and they're there and then their potential, the potential of their adulthood. So um so so yeah, it's things like that, and it's good for us. You know. We go out about once a year. I I I go once a year.
Gary goes a little quite a lot more often, but um to to kind of go to these do these field visits and kind of connect to people and talk. And it's just because as these numbers are accelerating and we're and we're kind of going from strength to strength with our with our with our work, which is really exciting, it's it's important to kind of keep and you know, keep remind ourselves of of of what it means because it becomes numbers. Forty three point seven million people, I mean,
what a number. But you know, I'm I'm still thinking about a girl I met twelve years ago, you know, And and so there are a lot there's so many millions of these people that will never meet. But um, but all of the stories are are like that, you know, and this is all about positive change. Yeah. Absolutely. As a follow up to that matter, how is how is
your work with those people affected your daughter too? Because I'm intrigued as to how you know, for her seeing her father, you know, be so service focused and you know, giving energy to this like have you taken have you and Gary too, have you taken your kids out? Like you know, have have you taken other children out? Young
people out? I'm just fascinating to hear how it feels when you're looking at someone your age as opposed to both of you obviously as older men looking at younger people, but like to have people looking at people their own age who have this mindset. I would love to hear some stories in that regard. I talk about in the book My Mom and and how she took me as a teenager to hit places where I witnessed extreme poverty and it was you know, and she didn't do any
finger wagging at me or lecturing. She just let me absorb it. And it really impacted me. And so my kids are what our oldest is twenty three, and so she's out of the nest. And then we've got a fifteen to thirteen and eleven year old. And so I've taken the twenty three year old and and uh, and I've taken our fifteen year old. We took her on a trip to the Philippines a few years ago, so she might have been thirteen at the time. You know,
it's it's kind of eat different with each kid. You kind of see why at what age can you is this gonna be positive? Positive? You know, it's it's just gonna influence you posatively. And so I took my my, my daughter and her best friend on a trip and
it was and it was great. And it's you know, letting them absorb, you know, with the kind of privilege that they have and they come from and that you know, this is all about where you're born, and you're born into a family you don't have any you know, say over it, and uh, and and and letting them try to put their let them try to put their lives in some context, which is how I felt, what I felt happened to me when when I when I when my mother introduced me to a larger world, Suddenly my
life started to make more sense, right and I and you know, we're all trapped in these subjective realities and limited by them in some way. But I feel like travel and experience like this is kind of the greatest gift because it helps at least to try to open us up. Yeah. I think that's beautiful what you said about gauging when it's right for the individual, because everyone, you know, there's no right age for any of them to have this experience, but really making it personalized, I
think that makes a lot of sense. Gary. How about you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I had a chance to take my daughter to Kenya and Ethiopia when she was about the same age as MAT's daughter, when we were in the Philippines, and uh, yeah, it's it's you know, those types of experiences you never know how they're going to reverberate later, you know, certainly, you know, uh, you know, having that experience helped shape her. You know,
she's done some great volunteer work herself. She was a volunteer teacher, you know, after she got out of college, and so I think some of the echoes of what she saw there and experience there, and the fortune that she has relative to many others in the world as has cropped up and will continue to. Yeah. Absolutely, I want you to explain Gary. We've mentioned it a few times now, uh, and of course you talk about it
deeply in the book. For our audience, I'd love to for you to explain exactly, in a simple way, how warter credit work. And then, Matt, I want you to talk about when you actually, you know, you had a hard time accepting the idea behind water credit, and then what made you change your mind to it, because I think that's what I find fascinating about this partnership between both of you is that it wasn't just like this, Oh we both loved this, let's get on, you know,
it wasn't It wasn't as simple as that. There's there's been a lot of planning, thought, intention behind this partnership between both of you, and I'd love to understand that's Gary, if you can explain what it is how it works, how it functions. We've obviously heard about some of the benefits and some elements of how it works, but I just want people to have a really clear idea and then Matt, if you could tell us about your journey with how you change your mind about it, that would
be great for sure. I mean, I'd be happy to I think, you know, it is rooted in that concept that people are already paying for water right the challenges they don't have that you know, two three hundred, four hundred dollars up front that they need to get a water connection, or to build a toilet at their home, or to install a handpumper a water tank, and so they are struggling day to day. They can afford you know, a dollar or two a day to get water, but
they can't afford those those large investments. And so what we saw, you know, we saw that people were struggling with this, and so it's like, well, what if we could get microfinance institutions that are already operating around the world just to make loans to them. That makes complete sense, right, and then they would repay the loans. Well, we went knocking on the doors of a lot of those MFIs microfinance institutions, and we kind of got the door slammed
in our face, Like, you guys don't understand microfinance. It's about income generating loans. You know, we make loans for sewing machines or cows because like, by the end of the week, you're generating revenue because you're selling clothes and you're selling milk, and this is why it works. And we're like, but we believe it will work because it's going to help these people work at paying jobs and you know that part of it. So it's like we'll
take on the risk. And this is why we raise philanthropic capital because we need to make grants to a lot of these part so that they can derisk these types of loans, so that they can do the market research and understand what things are good to loan for, what technologies are good, which ones are not, to help them then launch lending businesses. Once they do, then they go to the capital markets and get the wholesale capital,
then break it into millions of these micro loans. And so for a woman who gets that loan literally overnight, you know, she may have been spending three hours a day securing water the day before. She now has a water tap right at her home, and so literally the values created overnight for her to go out and work at a paying job so that she can repay the loan. And now you fast forward in these loans, three point five billion dollars in loans have gone out and they're
repaid at a ninety nine percent rate. Over eighty five percent of the borrowers live on less than six dollars a day, about thirty percent live on less than two dollars a day, and yet they keep coming for word to take out these loans because it makes sense for them, and they get the solutions that they want, and they don't feel like a charity case anymore. They feel like a market as a customer that's being served. And that's
how the whole thing can work financially. So that we've now got the financial plumbing, if you will, that connects the global capital markets where people can get a financial return on their investment. Two women making a few dollars a day, everybody wins and we all move forward. Yeah, Gary, thank you for that. Thanks for connecting the dots. I know we talked about, you know, parts of that all
over this conversation so far. But that was a really comprehensive breakdown, and I think that really helps because there's so many facets of that that I think is new. It's just so new, it's so alien to us, which just shows how big an issue it is and how
much emphasis it needs. And Matt tell us about when you first had the idea and you were skeptical slightly, I guess, and then you obviously have come around one was excited about it as I, as you know, as I kind of drilled down on it and and and and really worked it over with Gary and thought about it. But there there was the aspect of it that was a little stomach turning, which was, wait a minute, we're going to make people, the poorest people on earth pay
for you know. I mean they're gonna take these, We're gonna loan the money. We're not gonna right. But but philosophically we're very aligned in this idea about you know, charity quote unquote charity, and and and and how as you like like there's a paternalistic aspect to it. There's a there's a kind of you know, here's your solution,
You're welcome, you know, uh, arrogance about it oftentimes. And and and what Gary's talking about is with these loan programs, the dignity that come with them, right, And it's it's it's the dignity on the side of the borrower, but it's also on the side of the lender kind of going. I see you as a human being. You're a customer, you know what I mean, we can do business. It's a very different relationship than you're just some problem I got to throw money at, right, and and so so
I I got over that pretty quickly, you know. I mean, my stomach is like, oh god, market based solutions, Oh no, what am I doing? But um but when I really thought about it, and you know, it struck me as completely brilliant and um. And and that's been borne out.
I mean, we you know, we reached our first million people in twenty twelve, and and now you know we're you know, we're at forty three million, we're reaching you know, however many million a quarter now, um, And it's just really accelerating and that and that is illustrative of of you know, the demand, right, the demand for these loans
because they make sense and um. And it's not that paternalistic kind of charity solution that's going to be not working in five years because it's nobody's going to take a loan out for something they don't want. Yeah, yeah, they know what solution they need, and that's what they're going to take a loan out for. And it's going to work. And that's a sustainable solution for somebody. And
it's also them solving their own problem. And and it just took us to to to to nudge the market towards them and let them claim their own agency and and and solve their own problem with with dignity. Yeah, I think that point in dignity is so powerful and so important. It's I know exactly what you mean. It takes a while to get it around there because you're like, wait a minute, are we charging people for you know,
like how how does this work? But yeah, and they're going like if you're going across the desert and you see somebody, you know, thirsty, you know, and then you sell them a bottle of water, like you know, it doesn't it doesn't feel right, you know. Yeah. Yeah, but but you're saying as as you rightly said that from a long term perspective and from a sustainability perspective, this person is now building confidence. They're they're building it, as
you said, a sense of agency. They're feeling empowered, they're feeling a sense of assurance that they are growing through this journey as well, and they're able to, as you said,
learn it for things that are important to them. Tell me about this partnership for change that you both have, because I think, you know, I wonder whether when both of you got passionate, because as far as I know, you got passionate independently and then of course connected with each other about this cause when you're looking for a partnership for change, I think that can you know, take a lot of time, effort, patience. There's so many things
that need to align. If there are people in our community audience thinking right now, like I'd love to have someone else in my life that I could work with passionately about this, or I would love to find someone what are some of the things that they should look for, Matt. We obviously know Gary was your second choice, so we'll start with what you're looking for in your first choice. And Gary, I'm sure you had some other picks too, but no, I would love to know what you were
looking for an a partner. Were you even looking or was it just it was just so like, oh wow, I'm so grateful that I've bumped into someone who has this passion. From both of your perspectives, I'd love to hear how you approach this, because making a change is not easy. It's a long journey. You need different skill sets and different networks and communities, and so I often think that a lot of people say, oh, yeah, when when I find someone, then I can do something. You
were both independently. I mean, Gary, you started in your college days, right, So I want to hear about how it was in the search of a partner, the pursuit of the partner, and then what you actually looked for and why it was a good fit. Well, I was looking for the expert in the space, and that Gary's name was the name that kept coming up, and um and and in getting to know him, it was just clear why. And I mean he's just brilliant and these I mean this water credit innovation is a really big deal.
Um and uh and and and he arrived at that through his through his intelligence, but also through his tenacity. And so he was he was a logical partner for me exactly what I was looking for. I you know, I kind of woke up in my late twenties with this very bizarre reality of being a celebrity and and uh and and and wanted to find ways to do something good with that and and I needed help, you know, and I wanted to be effective. I didn't want to just It wasn't about soothing my own you know, ego.
It was about really trying to do something that was helpful. Um and uh. And I think just in meeting Gary, like you know, we we joined our organizations and he had had Water Partners at that point for twenty years and instantly gave up the title of Water Partners and for water dot org. And I think that showed like the humility, the lack of ego, right, And I think we both came at it from that perspective. It was never about us or about ego. It was really about
how can we be most effective? Right and that and we're really aligned in that way and um and in that sense, it's just the perfect partner for me. That's beautiful. You you made up for it, Matt. That was very half half out and uh, now January that that's that's so wonderful to hear. I love hearing about that, and and the quality of humility and like you said, being able to put aside water partners and start something on
the water doorg. That's fantastic, Gary, Gary your thoughts. Yeah, I think, uh, you know, the serendipity of it was, that's definitely a play allowing our paths to cross. But certainly, you know, I had been heads down on this problem and had been trying to innovate and you know, this this whole concept of you know, coming at it from.
You know, initially I was very much about like, let's go drill wells and let's uh, you know, raise a lot of money and give it away, but quickly realized that there was never going to be enough, right, and so this concept of lighting a candle versus cursing the darkness is kind of where where I came at it from. And so I was trying to to find those ways to do that, and we you know, we were catching on.
You know, the water credit was was like it wasn't like game Busters yet, but we knew that we kind of had you know, a tiger by the tail in terms of how this could scale and but you know, I'm an engineer, Like I don't what do I know about storytelling? What do I know about like moving an audience? What do I know about like having a big voice in this? Because we were ready for that, because it we you know, we had a certain amount of humility
until that point. And then it's like, now we got to tell the story and then to be able to get introduced to and cross paths with, you know, an incredible storyteller that Matt is, and seeing that firsthand, it just was, you know, it was one of those things one plus one equals three D for sure, and it
seemed that way at first for both of us. But then as we got to know each other kind of at a deeper level, our philosophies and our upbringings and our experiences, it's just like, Okay, I can really trust this guy. I think we've both felt that for both directions. And once you have that trust and you have you know, everything set in motion, it's kind of a table set for you and you bring those relative strengths. Uh. You know, I can certainly say Matt has evolved more as a
water expert than I have as an actor. But there but what I also he didn't tell you earlier is I went to Ben Affleck first, he turned me down. I love it. I love it. You've both been so generous with your time. I have one last question, which is just how people can support. Of course, I highly recommend everyone goes and grabs a copy of the book The Worth of Water, our story of chasing solutions to the world's greatest challenge. It will be in the comments,
the caption, the bio, the link in the podcast. You can go and order the book right now. But Gary, you used a water metaphor at the end of the chapter of the chapter called the wave, and you said to end the crisis, we need a wave. I would love to know how my community can be a part of that wave. How I can be a part of that wave. What are the opportunities and ways people can get involved, because I think ultimately there's there's going to be no one who reads the book that isn't moved
by the work. Who everything you've shared today, I think we'll want to move people into action. How can people support That's that's the last question I want to ask you, because I know I'm mindful of your time as well. That's a great question, and you know this, we do need that support. This is such a big crisis. It's all hands on deck and there are a number of ways. Of course, you know, as authors, Matt and I are donating all of our fees back to water dot org
for the book. So every time somebody buys the book, you are helping people get access to safe water. You know, if the book moves you take it to your book club, you know, spread the word that way, you know, pass the book on to someone else, because it is you know, these individual acts of people who provide that that funding that we need so that these individual stories that are in the book can come to life. That is what
it's going to take from from all of us. And to the extent that you know you're using your voice, Jay to help make this happen, We greatly appreciate. Yeah. Absolutely, No, I would love to visit one of the places with you one day. I think it would be a really beautiful experience for me my team too, So we would love to have it. Yeah, Yeah, that would be really Yeah,
that would be really beautiful. That would be wonderful to do. So, Matt, did you want to add anything to everything that Garager said? Of how anyone can get involved or anything that comes to your mind or hot well, yeah, I mean it's five dollars to bring a person clean water for life. And uh, you know, so it's not you know, yeah, I know, it's it's it's it's crazy, but but that's
what it is. And and uh and yeah, and the book obviously, you know, uh will you know all the you know, our money goes towards that, so um so yeah, and and and please share the story and uh, you know, talk about it. It's it's a really fascinating issue, I promise if you want to engage with it. And uh and uh, you know, and and and try to kind of move the needle, um, because it's again so hard for us to relate, you know, because because water is
in such abundance for us. Yeah. And as we always say on purpose, it's like when we are a part of the solution, the view of the problem changes. Right when you see these stories. And that's why I love
what Gary and Matt have done here. When you read these stories and you hear these stories, and when you'll share the book with people and you get to see that change does work, that there are positive stories that you know, we do live in a world that has challenges and issues, but that five dollars could make a difference to someone's daily life and how they feel when they wake up in the morning, and that makes a
difference like that has a ripple effect. And I think we need to tell these stories more because we can get caught up in the stories if we can't do anything and we are helpless. But Gary and Matt, I'm so grateful that you've given us a platform through which we can all feel like we're having an impact. Again, highly recommend everyone grabbed the book. As you said, all proceeds from the book go towards all the amazing work.
And I thank you both for taking the time and give me or energy and look forward to continuing to support you guys. So thank you so much for what you're doing. It's it's so powerful. Really appreciate it. Thanks j take care. Thank you so much. Everyone who's been listening or watching, make sure you share this interview, pass it along, tag us all on social media, letting us know what's resonated with you, what's connected with you. Share it. When you order the book, tag me to let me
know you've ordered it. So that I can reshare that across social media as well. And thank you all for listening and watching. Thanks Matt, Thanks Gary, thank you so much.