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

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.

Matt co-founded Water.org with Gary White. It is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to inspire people to act. It aims to challenge the traditional approach to assisting people in developing countries through social innovation that enables these communities to take a leading role in solving their own water supply problems.

In most developed nations, we take access to safe water for granted. Yet, a little more than 100 years ago, cities like New York, London and Paris were places of infectious disease. Child death rates were as high then as they are now in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was social innovation and sweeping reforms in water and sanitation that enabled progress in these places. AOL, with its commitment to social responsibility and social innovation, has decided to try to change things with Matt Damon. AOL works on ways to create an environment of accessibility, a culture of embracing diversity, empowering communities and being environmentally responsible.

We all love Christmas and the festivities that surround it. People love to celebrate, so what could be a better cause for celebration than having access to clean water for the first time in your community's history? Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources. Thankfully, things are changing and some credit should go to the social innovation work of Water.org. Since 1990 it has improved the lives of millions of people in the developing world giving safe water and improved sanitation systems. Now that's something to think about this Christmas time.

Photo Credit: Water.org