This one we're talking about: It is ready to reach hundreds of millions of people," he says "That's an exciting thing."ĭamon and Gary White - CEO and co-founder of both and WaterEquity - spoke to Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an episode of “ Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.ĭamon kicked off his water philanthropy with the launch of H2O Africa in 2006, while working on a documentary called "Running the Sahara," which profiled three men who attempted to traverse the Sahara Dessert.Īt a Clinton Global Initiative meeting two years later, Damon met White, who nearly two decades earlier had founded WaterPartners International, an organization that sought to alleviate the water crisis in Latin America, Barron's reported. Since its inception, has disbursed 7.2 million small loans totaling $2.6 billion, which have improved water access for 33 million people, according to its website.ĭamon said a wave of private sector investment could dramatically scale up the aid model, getting the world closer to ending the struggle faced by 2.2 billion people worldwide who lack access to safe drinking water. In 2019, Gates and Damon both spoke about their respective aid efforts at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Anytime I'm in a room with him, that's his clarion call, is that we're moving in the right direction." "It's, 'We are going in the right direction, and there are solutions available' - that's what he says quite often," Damon adds. "Because it's so easy to become nihilistic and dark about this stuff." And and I think that is a key takeaway: To look at the trajectory of humankind," Damon says. "If you listen to him, he's always optimistic. That year, he and his wife co-founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which now employs more than 1,600 and has given out nearly $55 billion in grants to public health and other initiatives around the globe. Until 2000, Gates led personal computing giant Microsoft ( MSFT).
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