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Clean Water for End-of-Life Care in Rural Guatemala:
Honoring the sick and elderly in Cerro de Oro with safe water for care, comfort, and dignity.
When someone we love is near the end of their life, we assume they’ll have unlimited clean water. No one worries that the water in a care home will make things worse. Families can focus on being present, saying goodbye, and making every day count.
But in rural Cerro de Oro, Guatemala, the sick and elderly don't have access to clean drinking and medical water. Without safe water, stomach illness and infections become part of end-of-life. The people who need comfort and care the most face avoidable suffering in their final days simply because they don’t have clean water.
This project will first provide reliable, consistent, clean water for medical use and drinking at the new end-of-life facility in Cerro de Oro. We can meet these immediate needs by purchasing locally treated water and simple gravity water filters for around $750 per year.
The next, more impactful step will be the design of a pump, storage, and treatment system that can provide hundreds of times more water — enough clean water for bathing at the end-of-life facility and for clean drinking water for the surrounding rural, impoverished community that currently drinks untreated water.
Our goal is to raise $5,000 and our founders have already donated $600 to get started.
Will you join us in donating?
For $25, you can provide 6 months of clean water for an end-of-life patient
Why Clean Water Matters in Cerro de Oro
Cerro de Oro is a rural, low-income community on the shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Many families rely on untreated water for drinking, cooking, and washing. For people who are already sick or elderly, this makes every infection and stomach illness more dangerous and makes basic care much harder.
For end-of-life care to be truly compassionate, safe water has to be part of it.
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The Impact of Your Support: Comfort and Protection
Our first priority is to make sure the new end-of-life care facility in Cerro de Oro has reliable, consistent, and clean water for drinking and basic medical care. This is the fastest way to reduce infections and stomach illness for people in end-of-life care.
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We’ll purchase locally treated water delivered to the facility and supplement with water treated by simple gravity water filters, with a total cost of ~$750 per year.
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Our founders have donated $600 so we're almost there!
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Donating $25 is enough for one patient for 6 months.
After the facility's basic clean water needs are covered, the next step is to design and install a small water treatment system.
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A carefully designed system (pump, storage tank, and optimized treatment process) could provide clean water for the care facility and the entire surrounding community for many years to come.
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This is where Clean Water Help shines - we are full of knowledgeable water treatment scientists and engineers that will design a practical treatment system FOR FREE and use all donations to pay for parts and for local contractors to build the system we design.
Our goal is to raise $5,000
to fund both initiatives
Your gift helps meet immediate needs now and lay the groundwork for a simple, long-term solution.
Our Partner in Compassion:
Gospel of Life Disciples (GOLD)
We don’t run this project alone. We've partnered with GOLD, a Texas-based group with a mission to provide end-of-life care for the sick and elderly, focusing on impoverished communities.
GOLD leads the care and community presence in Cerro de Oro, including design, permitting, and construction of the end-of-life care facility.
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Clean water for medical care and drinking water is the most critical need to help provide adequate care for the sick and elderly in this rural community
Clean Water Help provides water expertise, helps design the treatment options, and manages water project funding and transparency, so donors can be confident their support goes directly to water solutions for the people who need it most.
United by Compassion
From left: Sister Maria of Gospel of Life Disciples (GOLD), Clean Water Help President Dr. Stephen McCord, and 3 colleagues from the local university, Centro de Estudio de Atitlan (CEA)
Financial Transparency:
Our Pledge to You
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The first $750 will only be used to buy treated water from a local small business or cost-effective, practical water filters.
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Clean Water Help will design the community-scale treatment system for free.
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All remaining funds will be used to buy treatment system components or pay local contractors to build the system