All I want for Christmas...Social Innovation Gift Idea from Matt Damon

Dec 12, 2011 5:00 PM ET
Campaign: CSR Blogs

Posted by Sangeeta Haindl

Another year, another Christmas, and for the second year in a row, Matt Damon partners with AOL to create a special social innovation holiday season video, "You've Got," promoting the purchase of his Water.org's limited edition CamelBak Groove bottle. It's a life-changing gift, where each sale helps brings safe drinking water and sanitation to the developing world. In the video posted on AOL, Matt models a blanket with arms called a Snuggie to explain why his charitable water bottle is a better gift idea this Christmas. Last year Matt's video helped to raise $26,000 in just one day.

Ironically, more people in the world now own cell phones than have access to a toilet. Each day the lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life. Without water, life does not exist. Yet today, nearly one billion people - about one in eight - lack access to clean water. More than twice that many, 2.5 billion people, don't have access to a toilet. Although water is a renewable resource, it is also a finite one. Only 2.53 percent of earth's water is fresh, and some two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. Social innovation is needed to help improve and change these statistics.

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Sangeeta Haindl is a staff writer for Justmeans on Social Enterprise. When not writing for Justmeans, Sangeeta wears her other hat as a PR professional. Over the years, she has worked with high-profile organizations within the public, not-for-profit and corporate sectors; and won awards from her industry. She now runs her own UK consultancy: Serendipity PR & Media.