Hollywood star Matt Damon began his charity work because he says he needed "to start to look outside myself."

After seeing the extreme poverty in Africa up close, Damon told Canada AM that he became involved with DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa) and ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History, to use his celebrity to help bring attention to the catastrophic situation.

"It's about trying to raise people's awareness. That's my small part," Damon told Seamus O'Regan at The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto on Sunday.

OnexOne is the star-studded charity event established by Joelle Adler to generate funding for national and international causes.  This year Damon hosted the OnexOne gala fundraiser during the Toronto International Film Festival.

Last year at the inaugural OnexOne fundraiser, $1.3 million dollars were raised and this year, the event is focusing specifically on helping children around the world. Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the UN Millennium Project is working to reduce extreme poverty, disease and hunger by 2015, spoke at the event.

Canada AM talked to Damon about what he specifically saw happening in Africa, and why he believes the whole world needs to take ownership of this problem.

Seamus O'Regan: So what brings you to Toronto?

Matt Damon: Well we are here to kick off an initiative, a clean water initiative that we're doing, connected to a project that we're going to bring back to the festival next year.

I went to Africa earlier this year with DATA, and One, Bono's organization. It was an incredible trip, it definitely changed my life.

I went there and I felt really inspired, and there were incredible people on the ground there doing incredible work, and that there was solutions to all of these problems. It really energized me and I came back feeling like, if I could just share what I saw, with everyday folks back here in the west, that hopefully that could help start the drumbeat to this collective consciousness raising and we can all get together and do something.

Because I really do feel like these problems are solvable. Having been there and seeing some of them being solved in front of my eyes. Instead of talking numbers, having actually seeing these lives affected by money that's being sent there and used properly in programs that are having this wonderful effect.

This clean water initiative that we're kicking off tonight, is one of the interconnected issues at the baseline of all of it is extreme poverty. So a lot of the questions are how do you lift people out of it, the 1.2 billion people left for dead, how do you pull them out? Jeffrey Sachs talks about 'How do you get them on the first rung of the ladder?'

One of the things that is a great help is access to clean water, and so many people don't have access to clean water. When you don't have access to clean water, you are more likely to, for instance be susceptible to disease.

O'Regan: And at the time you probably didn't know how much energy it takes. Some women have to walk 10-12 kilometers a day in order to find fresh water.

Actor Matt Damon during recent six day trip to Africa to study AIDS treatment.

Damon: And those are people who are lucky. I went and collected water with a girl there and we walked a couple miles to get the water and a couple miles back and she was lugging this water, she was incredibly strong. And the reason she was, is because she had access to clean drinking water.

As inconvenient as that was for her, and as much of her day that took up and took away from her studying, and took away from her time to focus on her life. Because that's another thing, your chance for economic success down the road is determined by how much time you are spending on your own survival.

We don't think about it, we go and get a glass of water and then we can go to school or read a book or do whatever we want. If a lot of our time spent is trying to just survive, that obviously takes away time for us just focusing on things that might just lift us out of poverty.

This girl that I met and collected water with had a chance because she had access to clean water. I asked her what she wanted to do when she got older, if she wanted to stay in her village. She broke out into a smile and said no, she wanted to go to the big city, to Moussaka in Zambia, and she said 'I want to move to Moussaka and I want to be a nurse.'"

And she had a chance to do that because she had access to clean water. Had she not, she might have spent all this time trying to forge for it and find the water, and wouldn't even have time to go to school. And this girl had a chance at a future because of that.

So this well that we went to, this bore well, thousand of people had access to it and the thing cost about 15 grand to put in. It's one of the things.

I went to Africa this year to start my own education.

O'Reagan: And what initiated that? I'm curious because there is no question that this is a great organization, and with Sachs and Bono, what was the initial spark for you? I know you are converted now, but initially what brought you there?

Damon: Well, it's pretty hard to live in the West and not hear about this issue, it's kind of everywhere. And for me I'd heard about it, I was aware of it, I was aware that extreme poverty was a huge issue and really is because as the world gets smaller, these are all problems that we need to understand that we share, it's not the other side of the world, it's not that continent, these are our problems, this world is shrinking. And we need to own these problems.

I knew that once I had the time, I've spent the last 10 years focusing on my career, and I've just been married and I'm starting a family and I've been really focusing on that, I really felt that when I get a moment, I really need to start to look outside myself. My wife and I both really want to do more.

O'Reagan: Did starting a family spur this on?

Matt Damon and his wife Luciana pose for a photograph, while walking the red capet at a fundraiser during the annual Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept 10, 2006. (CP / Nathan Denette)

Damon: It's one of the things that really did. Having a daughter and knowing that it's not over when I leave here, she's going to be here. I think it's hard for people sometimes to really internalize the fact that what we do now really does have an effect. I think sometimes these problems feel so overwhelming that we feel like, "Oh what the hell, I might as well just have fun and live my life."

We have to be enraged when that comes to us, because it's just not true. When I was growing up my mom put this note on the refrigerator, it was something that Gandhi said, which said that "No matter how insignificant it may seem, it is most important that you do it."

I honestly believe that the collective effort, the little things that we do together will markedly change the world for generations to come. Jeffery Sachs feels like this can be done very quickly if we have the collective will to do it. It's about trying to raise people's awareness. That's my small part.

All these issues are interconnected, it what it takes is a collective movement. Go to one.org and sign up, and read those bulletins as they come and stay informed.

O'Regan: I know you are aware of that fact that you know you have influence and you are guarded about it. You want to know how you can use it best. That must be a question you have to deal with an awful lot, for projects you are interested in, particularly this one.

Damon: Well, that's a big issue and I think I waited a long time because as you said I wanted to maintain credibility and that's why I went to Africa this year, I didn't want to come out of nowhere, start talking, just having read some books. I felt like it was important to go there and see it and start. I mean, that was my first trip and I'm planning a trip next year, this time with my family. I want to share it with my stepdaughter and my wife and my daughter, because if I say something, I want it to have as much weight as possible. I don't want it to seem ever frivolous.

Ultimately I'm not particularly excited that we live in a culture that celebrities are listened to more than people with real knowledge most of the time, but I do recognize it.

For instance, Brad Pitt did a Primetime with Diane Sawyer and he took some hits for it. People said, "Who the hell does he think he is?" But they ran the numbers and realized that the previous year, Africa had been talked about in American Primetime for five minutes, and Brad had been there for 60 minutes.

And so he says "Sure I'll take that hit, you know a schmuck for getting out there," but the reality is, we have this small sphere of influence, so what are you going to do with it?