Dreamers That Ignite Change: How to Become a True Visionary

John Renouard is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit WHOlives. While visiting Africa in 2010, John was taken aback that the lives of nearly all little girls and most women revolved around the daily burden of collecting contaminated water for their survival. After several months of contemplation, a solution finally came to him in the middle of the night. A transformative idea that has changed the lives of over 12 million people. John worked with a group of university engineering students to bring to life his dream of a human-powered water drill that could access clean water hundreds of feet below the surface. The Village Drill has since created more than 13,000 wells in 37+ countries, empowering more than 12 million people with clean water, better health, and renewed opportunities.

More recently, John became aware of the inhumane practice of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and the selling of Child Brides where girls as young as 8 years old are brutally cut in preparation to be sold to men for labor and self-gratification. In just the past 6 months John’s innovative efforts have been near miraculous. WHOlives has done more in 6 months than the combined efforts of 10 NGOs over the past 10 years. During the past cutting season, WHOlives efforts rescued over 2000 vulnerable girls and led to the arrests of over 60 perpetrators and is on track to not only reduce this crime against women but actually eliminate the practice altogether.

The American Red Cross presented him with an International Hero Award in 2015.

Connect with John at WHOlives.org

John’s words about this interview, “Ordinary people have incredibly intuitive solutions to many of the world’s “unsolvable” issues. I want the audience to walk away feeling empowered with the knowledge that it should be YOU who looks at an unsolvable issue and then comes up with an audaciously simple solution that breaks barriers.

 A good example is Muhammad Yunus, a simple banker who saw a social issue of women beggars and wondered what could be done to help. To everyone’s surprise, the simple answer he came up with was a $27 loan.  

I want to use two of my personal experiences in solving unsolvable issues. One is the Village Drill, my invention to help solve the world’s deadly water problems, which to date has created clean water for over 12 million people.  

The second solution is a new idea on how to approach ending the unspeakable act of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and the selling of “child brides.” My simple idea successfully led to the rescue of over 2,000 girls and the arrest of over 50 individuals, and we’re now on track to end this practice in Kenya. 

The goal is to motivate, inspire and teach the steps on how any individual, even without training or experience, can really break barriers and make a difference on the “impossible” issues we face today, no matter if they exist in our own neighborhoods, our cities or even on the other side of the world.  

I want to dispel the idea that these problems are better solved by committees, governments or think tanks.  

I emphasize that SIMPLE does not mean EASY. It will take grit and determination. You will have “experts” scoff at you, and academics will shun you – that is, of course, until you have proven them all wrong.” 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou
Welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Here’s Hugh Ballou, the founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation, where we help leaders define their vision in ways that create synergies with their teams. Our motto was transforming leaders, transforming organizations transforming lives. My guest today has done this. I mean, he’s in the trenches. And he’s gonna tell you his story about why he started this. But John Renouard, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange today. Tell people a little bit about who you are in your calling to this work, you’re doing

John Renouard
event here. And again, I appreciate the invite, this will be great. So you know, my journey started about 13 years ago. And when we took a family trip to Africa, my son was doing some humanitarian missionary work over there. And he came home. And about six months later, we brought my family over there. And the one thing that just caught my attention was the fact that the lives of almost all the women and girls that we saw, were, you know, basically, their lives were surrounded around the fact that they had to get water to their families every day. And so it was just everywhere you look, these girls were carrying these buckets of water on their head, to the point where I thought that it can’t all be water. And you know, but I found out that, you know, that it was, and we just had, again, I can’t believe it. Here we are in 2010, we’re still, you know, we’re still battling this, we’re still battling. And the one thing that they’re collecting clean water, whew. But they’re collecting this dirty, nasty water that quite honestly, we will not let our pets drink, let alone our family, our kids. And so that ignited a fire to and reality was on my plane trip home. When I was thinking about this, I just became angry. I remember the speech that President Johnson, Kennedy gave back in the early 60s saying, you know, by the end of this decade, we want to put a man on the moon. Well, part of that speech was also he talked about the fact that we also need to address clean water issues around the world. And here we are, you know, 50, you know, nearly 50 years or 40 years later, and we’ve put multiple people on the moon with the you know, the the Indian continent just put another aircraft on the on the moon. And yet, a third of our population is still struggling to get clean water every day. So that was the impetus that was you know, the moment where I said, Hey, I’m going to get involved.

Hugh Ballou
I can feel your passion. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s quite a remarkable journey. It’s so we’re going to talk about your website in a minute. But it’s called W H. O lives.org. What’s the origin origin and who,

John Renouard
so it’s actually an acronym is an acronym for water, health, and opportunity. And, on this plane ride home, when I’m just going over my mind, you know, it just seemed it became obvious to me that if there was some way to fix the water problem, then almost by default, we’re gonna fix half of the healthcare problems, because all these hospitals that we would visit, half of the beds were filled with people who had, you know, dirty water diseases. And then the idea that if you had clean water, and you and you had good health, then opportunity presents itself. Even if the opportunity for the girls to go to school and for the women to be productive and steady, instead of spending all these hours fetching water, if they had a resource that was close to them, then they could spend a lot more time and in actually creating income or teaching their kids and helping them with school.

Hugh Ballou
You can find all of our episodes at TheNonprofitExchange.org and that takes you to a page where all of the episodes are listed including this one. And we have people in our centers and online communities from around the world. As a matter of fact, you’re part of one of the countries you work in is Uganda, we have somebody watching us from Uganda, Pastor Alex Buni, who’s doing good work there, but you work in other countries too. But you are you are called to do something significant. But it’s started with water. Yes. How did the idea of the human-powered Water Trail known as the village trail come to, you know, what were the keys and steps and bring it to life and help the engineer in engineering make that work? Yeah,

John Renouard
Well, so this is interesting. So my background is in finance. So I have my Ph.D. At the university, I can even tell you where the engineering building was at. I knew where the PE facilities were at. And I know where the business facilities are. And that was about it. And so, and I struggled, I’ll tell you a little side story. A lot of people who knew me, they kind of knew my, you know, you know, that I have kind of a light attitude. And, even though I get passionate about things, I’m kind of a cut-up a little bit of a class clown. And a lot of people would say, you know, why do you think you had this idea? You’re not an engineer, you don’t have any real background in philanthropy? Why do you think you came up with that idea, I’m a religious person. And so I said, You know what, I think the Lord needed somebody dumb enough not to know this idea would work. But yet, you know, strong enough not to care what other people said. And that kind of wraps me up. And so what had happened when I came home from this, from this trip from Africa, I had no idea what to do. But it was always on my mind, I was always looking for, you know, for what can I do to you know, to do something. And quite literally, in the middle of the night, this idea for the use of a human power drill just kind of came to me, and it woke me up. I went to my dining room table, and I drew out what I could remember from this dream, not even realizing exactly what it was. And so that’s the first kind of I’ll call it a miracle. You can call it whatever you want in my life, I call it a miracle. And then the next day was the second one. And the second miracle came when I got a call from the engineering department at Brigham Young University where I had gone to school, asking me if I had a project for their engineers to work on through their capstone program. And quite honestly, I thought they had the wrong phone number. And, they were returning a call from two and a half months earlier when I had called them about a brick-making machine that I saw that they had developed several years ago. And so but just the timing, obviously, it was perfect. And so I told him about this idea I had for a human-powered drill and the idea and I drew it out, but I had no idea how to engineer it. And so the Capstone program, took this project on it was one of 30 programs that year. And so they basically have the school year to design and then build whatever projects they’re working on. So that’s how it all started. And, again, there has to be some faith there. But it starts with, you know, the human mind just just fixating on a problem. It’s kind of you know, when Einstein when the Apple dropped, I mean, that was his aha moment, right? And so So, so, if you’re focused on ideas, if you’re focused on a problem, you wait for those aha moments, and then you have to act on those moments.

Hugh Ballou
Leaders get things done. And if people asked me, you know, you can search for terms on leadership, and you probably get billions of them. But fundamentally, leaders get things done. And they figure out how it gets done. And they influence other people and you you’ve done that. It terrifically on your we’re gonna talk about your website in a minute, and there’s a video of this human power drill. That’s just absolutely brilliant. There are two on your website, you say there are 2.1 billion people that wake up every day without access to clean water. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. That’s a lot a third of the population or a quarter of about Yeah, yeah.

John Renouard
And more important, maybe not more polluted, but a figure that you can put in your head. Every year there’s about 3.4 million people who pass away because of either dirty water or lack of of water. Now 3.4 million. What is that? Well, let’s put it for your, for your audiences in the USA. If if these 343 point 4 million people who have died unnecessarily because of dirty water, have you laid them side by aside, and you started in San Francisco, and literally laid them side by side, three or four feet apart, all the way, that line of people would go from San Francisco to New York City, and out into the Atlantic, another 100 miles. Those are 3.4 million people. So think about you’re driving to work today. And every three or four feet, you see a, you know, a body who is unnecessarily has died because of this issue. You know, at what point would you say, hey, I need to get involved, I need to do something about it. Now, imagine taking a road trip across the United States, and every three or four feet, you saw a vision of of one of these individuals that pass away, every single year, year after year, because we haven’t solved this issue. And you get the sense of, you know, yeah, we need to do something not only individually, but but communally as a as a as a population.

Hugh Ballou
I’ve heard say that water is the next crisis. But it’s been a crisis. Yes, for many people, not enough for us, when we leave our tap running, we brush our teeth, and we see things like that. So in 2015, the American Red Cross International, you got the you won the Hero Award. What was that

John Renouard
about? Well, it was a surprise for you know, number one, you know, they don’t tell you that they have their eyes on like that. And it was they they call it the international Hero Award. The the irony was that, you know, I, the first 10 years of getting involved with this, I put my life on hold, basically, because I was spending five and a half months a year, in these foreign countries. We have village drills now in in 39 countries around the world. There’s 140 some drills, we’re actually finishing a well, we’re finishing about three wells that day, three to four wells a day, every single day, somewhere around the world with this little invention. So which may sound like a lot? Maybe it doesn’t, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. But But yeah, that’s, you know, it. You know, that’s where we’re at. That’s where this idea has led to. And, and again, right now, there’s probably close to 13 million people who are now drinking clean water. But that’s a far cry from the two, you know, billion that that still need it.

Hugh Ballou
That’s, yeah, you got this idea? On the way home, and you got this acronym to start it. So it’s not just a slam dunk? I have an idea. Let’s do it. And it’s successful. So yeah, what are just kind of summarize? How did you get this started? Because there’s a lot of people listening that might not be yet their potential. They got, yeah, probably most of our audience or people already have a nonprofit. But sometimes we got to go back and rethink things as a startup, because what we’re doing is not working, or things have changed. And it’s not working like it used to. So what were what were the steps and some of the challenges you had to overcome?

John Renouard
Yeah, the first thing was to put a business sense behind what we were doing, it’s great to have a good heart, but you but you, but you have to pay for whatever you’re doing. And, and so I came with it with it with my business background, my wife and I, we owned nine, center 21 franchises, so you know, we’d have four to 600 agents working for us at any given time. So mine was a business background. And when I got into this humanitarian business, I was stunned on how poorly they were run as businesses. And and the idea also comes about to where if you really want to be transformative, you got to come up with a new idea. But coming up with a new idea means that you’re going to have a whole lot of people who are going to doubt you and they’re going to question you. And so you have to have the fortitude to believe in what you’re doing. And you have to Ignore the naysayers you have to ignore we always call them the bad witches, you know, the witches that that are protecting you. So they tell you Oh, don’t go try that don’t go try this because you might get injured or you might get upset or you might get hurt. And you got to put that aside and you just got to have confidence in yourself confidence in your idea. And, and and I tell people stay away from committees because the committee is the you know, the the death of any new idea. Because again, new ideas are, are typically different. But that’s what it’s going to take to change this world. So so have the fortitude and understand that even though this process of focusing on your on your plan is easy, the execution is not it’s tough. And, and you’re gonna have again, the village drill, affectionately, as called the bumblebee in the sense that the Bumblebee is not supposed to fly, right the way it’s designed. But yet it does the village drill, every expert said that the village drill would never work until it did. And now, you know, they’re rethinking their, you know, their their ways of thinking. Everybody out there probably has an idea. That may sound stupid. And, and, and when you share it, you might even get some resistance. But if you believe in what you in your thought, If you believe in your process, then you just have to go. You just have to stick with it. And it’s tough. I didn’t know when I started this thing, I thought the hard part was going to be finding water. I didn’t realize the hard part was going to be finding other NGOs, who don’t understand that the way you’re approaching it is actually a better way. It’s actually a new way. And so there’s you’re going to have if you don’t have battles, you’re probably not doing it right.

Hugh Ballou
Wow, I’d like to point out to people this this man and I just met, he’s talking to the same stuff we’ve been, we support and I didn’t put words in his mouth. So see, it’s good ideas here. It’s a business. It’s not a for profit business. It’s a for purpose, business enterprise. So our profit is people’s lives impacting people’s lives, it’s return on impacts not return on our investment. So it’s a different mindset and being a financial person that may make sense to you. Now, the water thing was what you were you started, but you became aware of issues with women. And they are numerous. But what what do you work on there? And where is your focus? And what kind of programs do you offer there?

John Renouard
Yeah, so. So sometimes your purpose is going to lead you in directions that are unexpected. And that’s what happened to me personally. The reality is, we have this water, part of our of our, our nonprofit kind of down and I have some really fantastic people running that division. And which is enables me to focus more on innovation. And what can we do that is, you know, that is, that’s going to have more impact. And I’m gonna tell you from the beginning, if you’re in the nonprofit world, innovation does not get rewarded is one of the biggest mistakes we make as a community is not rewarding innovation. And if we have some time, at the very end, I can give you some statistics on that. But but you have to be innovative, if you’re a business, and you don’t innovate, you’re dead. Same thing, I believe in the nonprofit world is that if you don’t innovate, you maybe you don’t dead, but you just exist, you don’t you don’t improve, you don’t get better. And so that’s really an area that that we have to that we have to focus on. Now. In saying all that I lost my train of thought, what were we talking about?

Hugh Ballou
Sure, I’m again, so let’s take Oh, I miss the statistics. But really, what you’re talking about is a shift in mindset.

John Renouard
Yeah. Yeah. And so and so it was, it was an area that we were putting a well in, and we came across, we were putting a well in for a rescue center. And when I heard about it, I didn’t know what kind of rescue center it was, I think it was for animals or for lost art, or I had no idea. But I quickly found out that it was a rescue center for girls who were trying to escape this horrible tradition of what’s called FGM, or female genital mutilation. And what happens is, it’s it’s a tradition where they go and they’ll cut the girls in preparation to sell them as a child bride. Now child bride has is a girl who’s eight, nine, up to about 1415 years old, and they’re literally their family is going to sell that girl to a older man typically fit the 67 year old man as a fifth sixth 10th wife, and, and they use words like wife and they use words like child bride, to make it sound legitimate. It’s not this is slavery, this is trafficking of these little girls, it is removing their, you know, a part of their other organs to where they will never have pleasure in a relationship. And, and and again, the only reason they do it is for money and power and control. They call it tradition, but it’s only a tradition because no one stopped it. I mean, the person who started it, they didn’t have good intentions. When they started it. It was started with terrible intentions of dominance. Session. And so when we learned about this, this is that ability to make the switch. And I put my focus and my effort on changing that scenario and ending that scenario. But again, this is going to go back to what I talked about before, is what is your motivation? Is your motivation to put a bandaid on something? Or is it to like, end it? And my focus is always on on ending the practice. And so I approached this problem very, very differently. And we went to the police and said, Hey, what do you need, and, and we put in in to play some programs that had never been tried before. That were astoundingly successful. And in our first year, which is just this past, you know, from November, we started in November of 2022. And which was the starting of their cutting season, they actually do this in two seasons in the, what we call our winter season. And then and then right now we’re in the middle of our second cutting season, which is in the August timeframe. And the reality is, because of what we did, we have lower the percentage of these girls getting cut it used to, you know, prior to us showing up that they were cutting about 85% of the girls that were of the of the age typically when they started their menstrual cycle, you know, they were becoming a woman, and their families would would put them into this, in this idea that by being cut and being sold somehow that’s, that’s their entry into womanhood is just like, gosh, it’s just, it’s ludicrous. And so again, we went out to stop it. So we went to the police to find out, you know, what do they need in order to make the arrest? What do they need to protect the girls. And in our first year, there, we we actually rescued over 2000 girls from being cut, we had over 60 arrests, where there was never any arrest before. And And to date, we have I think about 32 or 33 convictions, the lowest conviction is two years, the highest is 15 years for these perpetrators of these crimes. And so that’s you know, so that was the focus shift. And, and, and again, you have to be willing and able to do that, but then also smart enough to implement it and not do what everybody else is doing. Because there are 10, very large NGOs that are fighting this thing. But what I found out was that they’re not fighting it, man. But I had one of them come to me and say, John, if you eliminate FGM, how are you going to raise money? And I almost fell off my chair I and then also things became like, wow, now things make sense. Why have they not been doing what they were saying they were doing, because if they ever solved it, they wouldn’t have that money counts. And so I’ll put that into your head right now have conviction, stick with your morals, and start solving issues. This is not a job for you to make money at. This is a career to improve the lives of other people’s that that’s my opinion of why we should be in this business in the first place.

Hugh Ballou
That’s what we think we end but we don’t we need the conviction that you have. So I’m gonna talk about your website for a second. But before that, I’m sure people are waving the heresy flag about the committee thing. The old saying is, committees are a place where good ideas go to die. Yes, it’s so there’s so many committees that don’t even know what their purpose is. So an alternative could be a short term project team that does a project and they’re done. Because you need people around you to do something, which is absolutely far cry from a committee. Yeah, a couple of statistics that I want to talk about your website.

John Renouard
Yeah. So and just from from the idea of, you have to have new ideas, new ideas do not come from committees. Once you have an idea, you need the committee to execute your idea, but more than likely your ideas going to come from you individually. From you racking your brain. And, and again, as quickly as I can imagine two NGOs. One, they both raised a million dollars, and one 90% of their money goes into the field and they help 50,000 people, the other NGO, only 60% of their funds go into the field because 30% goes to innovation, but because of their innovation, they can help 500,000 people. So on our on our books on our 990s we have to show over here that only 60% goes into the field but yet, nobody ever says Well, yeah, but they’re helping a half million people as opposed to this group where only a 50,000 people are being helped with that same million dollars raise they’re actually going to be You know, considered a better NGO when they’re not. So we have to change the way we think. And we have to look at impact as a measurement of how much good we’re actually doing.

Hugh Ballou
Maybe we need to change the way accounting for the accounting principles, because, yes, that is not overhead. Yeah. That is that is building up your work for in the field. Yeah. Let me just talk about your website. It’s W H, O, L. I V. s.org. Yes, go there. What will they find?

John Renouard
Well, they’re gonna, they’re gonna find a lot of our past, you know, accolades and how we started and what still needs to be, what still needs to be done. Yep, so that’s, yeah, there’s a, there’s a younger, heavier me without the facial hair. Um, so but you can go there. And if what we’re talking about speaks to your heart, feel free to go there. And, and, and you can help us out. Or if you just want to talk to me and say, Hey, I’m struggling with this, feel free to, you know, you know, to just get another listening ear to your idea. And if my experience can help you out, I’d love to be able to help you out. If that’s, you know, that’s something you need. So, but yeah, so yeah, who lives.org.

Hugh Ballou
And it’ll be in the link, if you’re looking at this on the website, or in the podcast. It’ll be in your narrative and the podcast, the script there. So I’m going to talk about the community, our community minute, then we’ll come back and want you to maybe come back with individuals who have passions that want to make change, you know, how do they get started in this. But, John, you’re invited to join the sinner vision community. All right, I think nonprofit community.org nonprofit community.org is just what it says that’ll revert to the center vision community. And there’s like minded people doing good work in there. You can post pictures about what you’re doing, you have conversations with like minded people. And guess what John is free, that level, nonprofit community.org. Now, if you want more you want, you’re starting out or you’re growing your organization, you want to build more stronger systems. There’s another level of it’s paid level called the influencer level. And once you’re in the free community, we have a conversation. If that fits you, then we get an invitation to join as an influencer. And then you get time with me every week and workshops, and all kinds of good stuff mastermind groups. So we we come with this making nonprofit leadership work affordable, because it takes leadership to make it work. And I guess you’re getting that from this interview today. This man made it happen. You know, there’s a lot safer skill, but there’s also the complementing piece called willpower, that you’ve got a calling to this work, and you have a passion for it, and a no compromise attitude. So that, to me, is one of the great inspirations from your sharing today. But what advice do you want to have the people who are passionate about something want to start it or grow it?

John Renouard
Yeah, I think kind of what we said the beginning is, don’t do what everybody else is doing. Unless it has, I mean, unless they have proven results. I mean, if if somebody has proven results, and you want to and you want to, you know, implement those strategies, that’s great. But the, you know, the greatest changes in life come from inspiration. And I would say, look for something that, that, you know, that that’s not being done and wait for that inspiration. And I talked to people who literally they it’s like, man, we have all this trash, if we just did X, Y or Z, we can solve that problem. We’ll take that idea to your, you know, your city council or, you know, maybe you have a homeless issue and you’re looking at like, man, if we just did this or that we could, you know, this would go a long ways. And again, have they have the, you know, the backbone to stand up to politicians and and the people who hold the purse strings and, and bring them this this idea, because, again, typically, you look at Muhammad Yunus who started the Grameen Bank, where he’s helped millions of young Indian women get out of poverty. Get out of begging, by just doing a $29 loan, it just changed everything. So find out what is your $29 loan? What is your idea to change this world? And, and go and, and, and just get it done? Again, it won’t be. It won’t be easy. You’re gonna have a lot of naysayers. That’s okay. You know, prove them all wrong.

Hugh Ballou
Prove them all wrong. You know, John. And in my history, writing a goal and sharing it. There’s two responses. There’s a lot of responses but these two, I call inspiration 1), that’s a great idea. How can I help you? That’s inspirational. The other one is #2 is not. You’re gonna do what! I call that inspiration. So you’ve you’ve nailed that one today. So, John, thank you so much for being our guest today on The Nonprofit Exchange. Thank you so much.

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