Matt Damon, along with other celebrities, have banned together to bar their bathroom doors until everyone on the planet has access to clean water. In a humorous, promotion video for the strike that is going viral, Bono, Damon, and Wilde poke fun at Illuminati conspiracies and toilet humor, all to shed light on the very serious subject.
That video is only one of many in a series of clips designed to highlight the global water crisis. Other videos include Jason Sudekis and Jessica Biel. Previously Damon released a hilariously-staged video of a press conference where he initially announced his strike.
According to water.org, the website that Damon co-founded, here are 780 million people in the world who do not have access to clean drinking water and 3.4 million people die each year from a water-related illness. The organization prides itself for working collaboratively with local organizations where there is a need for clean water to find solutions to sustainably deliver clean water. A $25 donation provides clean water to someone in the world for the rest of their life.
Speaking about his time in Ethiopia during an interview for water.org in 2011, he said “To know that you’re there in a place like that, and twenty feet under your feet, there’s water right there [but]they just can’t get to it… that had a pretty big impact on me.”
All joking aside, the intent of Damon’s strike is simple: to get people’s attention centered on the issue. In the same interview, he says: “We have a pretty ambitious mission statement.. We envision a world where everyone has access to clean water. We genuinely feel like we can solve this problem, and it starts to get exciting when I’m walking down the street and people come up and they want to talk about this stuff… It feels like we’re approaching that tipping point where enough people say ‘enough.’”
– Samantha Mauney
Source: Water.org
Videos: Matt Damon
Photo: RYOT