Matt Damon brings call for clean water for all to Sundance

The water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, is something millions of people across the globe experience every day. Actor Matt Damon and Gary White, co-founders of the nonprofit Water.org, came to the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday to call attention to the desperate need for clean water in impoverished regions around the world. Damon and White appeared alongside Todd Allen of Stella Artois to discuss the global water crisis and to announce their “Buy a Lady a Drink” campaign — so named because water shortages disproportionately affect women, who spend hours each day searching for water for their families. It has been revealed the water in Flint has been slowly poisoning families for years.

There are people for whom life is such a desperate struggle, that they’re faced every day with the choice of giving their children dirty water or no water at all.

Matt Damon

The partnership began last year and has provided water for 290,000 people so far, Allen said. White said enough clean water exists to satisfy the thirst and needs of everyone on the planet. "It just becomes where is the water and where are the people, and where are the financial resources to be able to treat it and move it,“ he said. "The water is there, but it’s the finance — it’s poverty that’s keeping us from solving the problems.”

When you start having kids, it’s hard not to see other kids as your own … It’s incumbent upon me to do whatever I can within my sphere of influence

Matt Damon

Matt Damon