Matt Damon: Together, We Can Move Mountains

When I was a boy, my mom had a magnet on the refrigerator with a little picture of Gandhi along with a quote from him. It said: "No matter how insignificant what you do may seem, it is important that you do it." As a child, I was raised to believe that, and to this day I do my best to live it.

Nowadays, sentimental magnetized credos have gone the way of nostalgia, and technology has forever changed the way younger generations communicate. But those are still really good words to live by.

I got an allowance of $5 a week when I was a kid, but I never spent much money on anything. My mother was involved in all sorts of causes, and when I was about 12, I started sending a little bit every month to one of them. I learned then that you find one thing that matters to you, and it changes your whole mind-set.

Here's something that matters to me right now. Every 15 seconds, a child dies because of a lack of clean water and sanitation. I should probably repeat that: Every 15 seconds, a child dies because of a lack of clean water and sanitation. A billion people on our planet will never have a clean drink of water. There are 2.5 billion people in the world without toilet facilities. That kind of deprivation isn't even on our radar in the U.S., but in Africa it's the central preoccupation of many people's lives.

And the most devastating thing about it is that it takes so little to change it. Just $25 will give someone clean water for life—yes, just $25 will change someone's future forever.

I've taken a lot of trips in the last few years to places like Africa and India and Haiti to try to learn what conditions are like. You can read about extreme poverty and possible solutions, but it's really powerful when you get to meet the people and shake their hands and listen to their stories. I try to keep my trips short because my kids are so young that my wife, Lucy, can't come. We don't like to be separated, but we both feel it's so important to learn about these things. There's so much I don't know. In the future, I know these trips are something we'll do as a family.

There's so much need, it's so hard to decide where to give. For me, I look at the organizations that are actually doing the work on the ground. I co-founded Water.org, which focuses on water and sanitation. I was in Ethiopia earlier this year, and I watched children taking filthy water out of a hand-dug well and putting it in bottles to take to school. The water was so dirty, it looked like chocolate milk. I wanted to knock it out of their hands and say, "Don't drink that—it could kill you." The dilemma is that drinking nothing at all will kill them even faster. Parents in these impoverished areas lose children every year to diseases that could be completely prevented if they had access to clean water. [read more...]

Show me, Father, what do you want me to do? I remember Mother Teresa was teaching the rich children in a sheltered convent, but she felt that there must be more to this than just teaching a few rich kids in a sheltered convent. And she heard You calling to her, to serve the poor.

Hmm... I think from where I am right now, I think You may be training me to do storytelling to educate children all over the world. To teach them English... teach them so that I can help to raise them out of poverty... and also share Your living water with them - the good news - to them. Help me be You to them, Lord I pray. You came not only to meet our physical needs, but the deeper need of the human heart... which your servant Mother Teresa understood - that the worser famine is not that of food, but of being unloved and unwanted.

I don't know what to do, but... I do know I'm on this journey You want me to go... so lead me Lord I pray. As You please... Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Help your Body - which is Your church - to manifest Your kingdom in the midst of this world. Amen.