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Making water flow: An interview with Matt Damon and Gary White
an article by McKinsey and Company (abridged)
Video: Making water flow
In this interview with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland,
the cofounders of the nonprofit organization
Water.org, Matt Damon and Gary White, discuss
practical ways to solve the global water and
sanitation crisis. Excerpts from an edited
transcript of Damon’s and White’s remarks follow.
Gary White and Matt Damon
click on photo to enlarge
Matt Damon: Every 20 seconds, a child dies
somewhere on the planet because of lack of access
to clean water and sanitation. Millions of
children are dying every year from completely
preventable diseases. . . It would take actually
less than 1 percent of the drinkable water to give
every single person—the 800 million or so who
currently lack access—to get them 40 to 50 liters
of water a day. I think there’s the
misunderstanding that there’s just not going to be
enough for everybody to survive, because that
certainly is not true. . .
Gary White: We’re coming at it not from a charity
approach—because there’s never going to be enough
charity in the world for everybody to get access
to safe water and sanitation. What we help the
poor do is tap into their intrinsic power as
customers and as citizens. And what that means is
basically helping them get access to microloans so
that they can get a water connection at their
home.
Matt and I were just in India last August and met
a woman there who was paying 1,200 rupees every
month for the water that she needed to buy from
her water vendors in her neighborhood and for her
family to go use the public toilet. And so she was
paying what was a huge amount of her income in
order to be able to do this.
And instead, what we were doing with our local
microfinance partners is offering her a loan so
she could pay her connection fee to the local
water utility and so she could build a toilet at
her home. And now her loan payments for the next
two years will only be 1,200 rupees a month, but
then after that, all she’ll have to pay is a small
water bill. And so she’ll have so much more income
available for her and her family after she does
that. There are places that people can participate
financially and come up with their own solutions
if they’re just given a little bit of a leg up. .
.
Our partners have disbursed a quarter of a million
loans, and the repayment rate is 98 percent; 94
percent of the recipients are women. WaterCredit
is a remarkable program. It’s been successful
beyond anything we could have really hoped. And
so, as we keep running these numbers up, and keep
proving and reproving the model, that’s really our
best argument going forward to engage the social
capital markets. . .
(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for
this article.)
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Is microcredit an empowering tool for poverty alleviation?,
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by program area
