Gary White’s goal: bring
clean water to a billion people who lack it
By David Conrads, Christian Science Monitor
Kansas City, Mo.—Nearly 1 billion people today lack access to safe drinking
water. About 2.5 billion go without basic sanitation like a decent toilet,
according to United Nations statistics.
If Gary White realizes his vision, everyone in the world will have safe
water and sanitation.
It’s a big, audacious goal. But those who speak with Mr. White, the
executive director of Water.org, the nonprofit organization he cofounded in
2009 with actor Matt Damon, find it’s not long before his can-do energy and
thoughtful demeanor persuade them that he just might pull it off.
White has spent 20 years working in the trenches of what he calls “the
water world”—the network of charities, relief groups, foundations,
municipalities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) trying to solve the
world’s water problems.
His innovative, counterintuitive approach already has brought safe water
to about 1 million people in eight countries in Latin America, Asia, and
Africa. It has also garnered multimillion-dollar donations from major
foundations and made White a star, not just in the water world but in the
larger sphere of global philanthropy.
“Gary comes to the problem of water access with the rigor and
thoroughness of a brilliant engineer,” says Claire Lyons, global grant
portfolio manager for the PepsiCo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the food
and beverage giant.
“Gary is not out there to be a star,” Ms. Lyons says. “That is not what
drives him. But he does understand, with savvy, that what he has been able to
achieve has great value. And now he is able to leverage that experience
incrementally. And the humility that comes with just who he is as a human being
is a selling point to others.”
PepsiCo Foundation has invested $4.1 million in Water.org to support
WaterCredit, an innovative program that uses micro-finance to help solve the
problem of access to clean water.
WaterCredit was the result of what White calls an “orthogonal
insight”—his term for inspiration that comes when seemingly unrelated ideas
intersect to solve a problem in an unexpected way.
Most poor people have some money, White realized. But they have to spend
an inordinate amount of it to buy water from private vendors. Many urban poor
could connect their houses to a public water supply but lack the $100 or so to
pay for it.
WaterCredit was launched in India in 2007. As of last June, more than
51,000 loans averaging $120 each were made by local microfinance partners
rigorously vetted by Water.org. These loans have benefited more than 300,000
individuals and have been repaid at a rate of 97 percent.
The loans also make more charitable dollars available to those in
absolute poverty, for whom a full subsidy is necessary.
White planned to be a civil engineer when he was a student in the early
1980s at what is now the Missouri University of Science and Technology in
Rolla. A trip to Central America changed all that. In the slums of Guatemala
City, he walked streets running with sewage and saw children carrying home
containers full of contaminated water.
“That was really a seminal moment for me,” White says. “When I saw that
intersection of engineering and the whole water and sanitation crisis, that’s
when I started to learn more about it, to try to figure out how I could make a
difference.”
After college, he worked for Catholic Relief Services on projects in
Latin America and the Caribbean and went on to graduate school at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During that time he formed
WaterPartners, which attracted grants from philanthropies.
One such grant was from H2O Africa, a group cofounded by actor Matt
Damon. After a lengthy courtship, WaterPartners merged with H2O Africa in 2009
to become Water.org.
Early on, White became frustrated by the staggering rate of water
project failures. In the 1980s and ’90s, an NGO typically sought out a needy
community, drilled a well for it, celebrated with a plaque and a photograph,
and called it a day.
The projects “were very much top-down, very charity-driven without a lot
of focus on long-term impact and results,” he says. “And projects were failing
at a tremendous rate, about 50 percent.”
White’s approach is different. Communities that want a water project
must take the first step and contact a local NGO certified as a Water.org
partner. Community members are seen as partners and must assume responsibility
for construction, hygiene education, collection of water tariffs, and maintenance
of the project.
The community also must pay at least 10 percent of the cost, either in
cash or building materials, or in sweat equity.
“The fact that they invest their labor and their cash increases the
likelihood that [the project] will be sustained,” he says.
Water.org has an impressive record of success. White has received many
awards and recognitions, including induction into the Philanthropic Hall of
Fame in 2008. But there’s still a long way to go. Does he really think his goal
can be attained? “Oh, yes,”
White says. “We’re going to get there.”
