Columbia Falls man leads clean water initiative in Guatemala

After the first time, Dave Renfrow traveled to Guatemala on a cycling trip through Central America it was clear to him that he was being pulled back there. That he was “endeared to Guatemala.”

But there was also something larger in store — and with the help of a few organizations, many volunteers and generous donors — the Columbia Falls man and his team have helped provide clean water to remote communities in the coastal highlands of Guatemala.

Renfrow said he wanted to make a positive impact in the communities of what he calls “real Guatemala,” rural agricultural communities far from the tourism stops, where most residents have to stop their education after third grade. He started taking more trips to San Andres Itzapa and soon befriended a local who had experience with carpentry from working in Ohio. The man, Elmer Arriaga, told Renfrow that he didn’t want to go back to the states for work because he wanted to focus on ways to improve the lives of people at home.

The two started looking into safer, more efficient stoves that could be used in homes, but their plans changed when the pandemic started. Arriaga contacted Renfrow saying that no one was working because of the shutdown.

“And one of my Rotary friends Terri Smiley said, ‘Dave, get some people a way to wash their hands at home, that’s one of the fundamentals,’” Renfrow said. “So we started making these things called Tippy-Taps, we raised some money from some local Rotary clubs and other individuals.”

So, “Clean Hands, Clean Water” was born, using Tippy-Taps; hand-washing stations that have bio-sand filter systems and can be made with local materials. Studies have shown disease reduction of 85% when these devices are coupled with WASH training, or Water, Sanitation and Hygiene training as defined by UNICEF.

Arriaga and a group of his friends distributed 650 Tippy-Taps and taught UNICEF handwashing protocol to several hundred people in a number of villages, Renfrow said.

The project is sponsored by international partner Whitefish Rotary Club, the Host Rotary Club Guatemala West, with support from the 13-member Western Montana Rotary Coalition. They also partnered with a local outreach organization in Guatemala called Los Buenos Vecinos (The Good Neighbors).

“I decided that if I wanted to make an impact I would have to get to the very, very basics, and that is clean water, and water and sanitation health. It’s the most fundamental thing we can do to help countries economically develop,” Renfrow said.

This was all great progress for their team, but soon there was a request from a member of a Rotary club in Guatemala. Renfrow said a woman there involved with the Ministry of Education for Guatemala asked that Tippy-Taps be put into schools as well. He said they got to work doing proper assessments and looking at data to determine how many students it would serve and what kind of fixtures would be needed before creating a school-sized Tippy-Tap.

“What we realized when we went to these schools is that they don’t have full-time water, in fact, 9,000 schools in Guatemala don’t have full-time water, in our part of the country it’s because of failing infrastructure and the water table has dropped…so sometimes the water will be on for a couple hours in the middle of the night, or Wednesday afternoons…we all know that washing hands is a big deal with disease prevention,” Renfrow said.

Now when the water comes on it’s collected in a 50-gallon barrel so that when the students get to school there’s water for them to use, he noted. The fix created by Arriaga helps ensure that the Tippy-Taps could serve 100 students, with four hand washes a day for four days until the next time that the water comes on.

Renfrow said there have been 140 school-sized Tippy-Taps distributed, with more that can be shipped cheaply and easily by bus to anywhere in the country.

One of the most important aspects of “Clean Water, Clean Hands” is their long-term stewardship plan. Renfrow said this means identifying individuals called “WASH Champions” in these communities who can continue to train their villages in WASH protocols and oversee the use of these handwashing stations. They will look for an elected official, maybe a local nurse, a school teacher — people, and particularly women, who are already apt to be “agents of change” in their communities. Renfrow said it is required that at least one woman is on a local team, preferably more, as they are the ones who pass down information and teach new generations. WASH Champions receive the complete UNICEF WASH training, which includes handwashing procedures, maintenance of the water filters, menstruation hygiene, food safety, latrine building and watershed management.

Renfrow is joined by five other volunteers from the Flathead, including Sam Avery from Whitefish who says that implementing the WASH Champion program is the best way to continue the practice in future generations.

“By training the women who teach the children at home, it’s integrating it into their standard developmental education and instilling it in the next generation and creating this behavioral change that wasn’t there before,” Avery said. “Because it’s pretty simple knowledge but it hasn’t been established.”

The long-term success of this project hinges on the involvement of these community members. Renfrow said recently, the community of Montellano saw success with their WASH Champions, a mother and daughter who set out on “monitoring day” to check on 42 homes where people were engaged in making water filters. Renfrow said their team was happy to hear their findings, which showed that water was testing 99% pure and people were drinking it.

Access to clean water seems like a no-brainer for improvements in quality of life, but Renfrow said these important changes could have even bigger domino effects down the line. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world. Renfrow said as much as 80% of the children in the district they work in are malnourished and have issues with diarrhea because of dirty water. Access to clean water could mean a longer education for these kids, who could go on to provide a better income for their families.

“If you get a kid through eighth grade, their earnings are double those of the average, which is third grade,” Renfrow said.

Recently, a consortium of Montana Rotary Clubs joined forces to win a $39,000 grant from Rotary International to fund the ongoing clean water initiatives in Guatemala. Renfrow said most of the funds go toward supplies for the filtration systems and stations, but a good portion of it goes to training WASH Champions. He said one challenge they run into is seeing an overwhelming amount of need but knowing they can’t assist with every problem they come across.

“There’s needs everywhere, and that’s one of the challenges — I’m grateful that Sam helps keep me on track, there’s times when my empathy gland is grossly enlarged and we can’t fix everything, but we can fix the most important things very thoroughly in a couple of districts,” Renfrow said.

Anyone interested in supporting “Clean Water, Clean Hands” can make a donation at a local Rotary club in the Flathead Valley, or at https://www.losbuenosvecinos.com/.

Reporter Taylor Inman may be reached at tinman@dailyinterlake.com.