Matt Damon doesn’t come to mind when one thinks about Hip-Hop music, but he’s employing the culture as a vehicle to support a necessary initiative. With his Water.org co-founder, Gary White, Matt Damon is using music as a way to bring attention to Get Blue, which connects consumers with partner brands that are aiming their collective efforts to address the global water crisis.
In a new feature from GQ, Matt Damon and engineer turned philanthropist, Gary White, talk at length about Water.org’s new Get Blue initiative, which partnered with GAP, Starbucks, Amazon, and Ecolab, for branded consumer products that go towards the organization’s larger effort in providing clean water to underserved nations.
From GQ:
Your dulcet tones. But, OK—so the focus is shifting, with this GetBlue campaign.
White: Expanding.
Damon: Yeah. The great thing about this system of micro-loaning is that it’s driven the philanthropic cost per person [way] down. So classically it costs $25 to get somebody safe water. But what we’ve been puzzling over for years, the question we get all the time from people, is How do I help? And Get Blue is a way to say to people, Look, in your everyday life, without changing much at all, if you look for Get Blue products, and that’s where you put your dollar, some of the proceeds from, say, the blue matcha that you buy, that’s going to Water.org. That’s going directly to this problem. And so if you’re keeping that ticker in your head that $25 gets an entire family on the other side of the world clean water, then you start to realize that you really are having a major impact just by being intentional about how you’re spending the money that you were going to spend anyway.
We’re taking on new ones as they come, but the founding partners are Gap, Amazon, and Starbucks. Ecolab as well, which is a B2B, but that’s different. But the public-facing, consumer-facing brands are Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon.
White: And [we’re] working with TikTok now as well.
Damon: [wryly] Which is right in our wheelhouse.
While Water.org’s aims are still the same, Get Blue is an entry point for people who want to assist but aren’t sure where to begin. Given that donations help organizations like Water.org run, Damon and White believe Get Blue will provide an easier pathway for those not accustomed to giving.
However, getting the word out is another thing, and Damon, 55, is working with famed producer Hit-Boy under the rap name The Nomad, to, as he put it to his partner, “spit bars” to get folks on board.
The entire profile is a fascinating read. Check it out here.
Learn more about Get Blue here.
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Photo: Getty
