With his star-studded looks and Academy awards to boot, actor Matt Damon is more than just a Hollywood superstar. He has teamed up with environmentalist Gary White and founded Water.org. – a nonprofit organization that is focused on solving the global water and sanitation crisis.The statistics that surround the global water crisis are startling.

748 million people lack access to clean water. Every year, 3.4 million people die from a water-related disease. Almost every minute a child dies from diarrhea and 36 percent world’s population doesn’t have access to proper sanitation. The actor spoke on Tuesday at the Clinton Global Initiative in a session on “Cities as Labs of Innovation”.

“The problem is just so massive, but you know, given that we know a kid is dying every 20 or 21 seconds from something that is completely preventable, I mean think of it in those terms, you know,” said Damon during a question-and-answer session on stage.

“We solved this here in the West a hundred years ago. Just imagine if we solved AIDS tomorrow or cancer, and in a hundred years children were still dying by the millions. It’s really unconscionable. And that was really what kind of drew me to water was the enormity — water and sanitation — and how it really underlined everything. We were talking about extreme poverty and engaging with extreme poverty, you can not solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.”

Matt Damon and Gary White spoke to CCTV America’s Shraysi Tandon on why they chose water crisis as their currency for impact.