H2O Africa Foundation


The H2O Africa Foundation was an NGO founded by Matt Damon to raise awareness about clean water initiatives in Africa. It was part of the Running the Sahara expedition and documentary project undertaken by Damon, James Moll, LivePlanet, and the Independent Producers Alliance. In 2009, the H2O Africa Foundation merged with WaterPartners to form Water.org, an organization co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White of WaterPartners
in July 2009.

History

When Matt Damon and his producing partners Marc Joubert, Larry Tanz, and Keith Quinn were starting to work on planning the expedition and film for Running the Sahara, Damon had the idea of starting a charitable initiative. It was informally launched in the spring of 2006, and Richard Klopp was hired as launch Executive Director.
When film financier IPA came on board the foundation was officially named H2O Africa and was announced on September 10, 2006 during a ONEXONE event at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was started as the charitable arm of the Running the Sahara film project, with the goal of raising money and awareness for organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme Clean Water Initiative, Living Water International, and the Millennium Promise project. On May 29, 2007, H2O Africa announced a new partnership with the Ryan's Well Foundation.

Projects

H2O Africa was involved with the following projects: