The authors Matt Damon, Gary White, and Kris Licht.
How will that money help end the water crisis? Very directly: by building lending capacity of local micro-finance institutions to effectively serve affordable water and sanitation loans to households at the base of the economic pyramid who need them most. Right now, these households are not only at a supreme disadvantage in everyday life, but they also face the worst consequences of more extreme weather, floods, droughts, and epidemics like globally resurgentAs always, people are making do and meeting their families' needs as best they can, people like Amina in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who used to walk more than four miles every day to collect water. Such heroic daily efforts will never end the water crisis, though.
In a sector that was traditionally left to charitable projects, water and sanitation microfinance has now taken the lead in annual funding flows. And because microfinance puts investment in the hands of households, it can scale as fast as finance comes into the model. In 2022, for example, Water.org enabled microloans that reached over 8 million people, with a
around the world. This year's collaborative investment with the WRC, leveraging capital from corporate balance sheets, aims to amplify this impact further.