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DFID working in Partnership with Pump Aid - Water for Life in Zimbabwe
Pumpaid.org
August 12, 2005

Pump Aid tackles poverty by working with local communities to establish sustainable supplies of clean water for improved health and increased agricultural production. The profile of Pump Aid was raised this year, when they won the St Andrews Medal and Prize for the Environment 2005. In a strong field of 261 projects nominated from 50 countries, Pump Aid took the top prize due to the success of their Elephant Pump programmes in Zimbabwe and Malawi.

DFID has recently entered into partnership with Pump Aid in Zimbabwe under their Protracted Relief Programme. This followed a series of small grants awarded through the British Embassy in Harare which proved to be very cost effective. Two grants totaling twenty five thousand pounds were enough for installation of Elephants Pumps at fifty poor rural schools plus other pumps in the nearby villages benefiting over 30,000 people.

In addition to providing clean drinking water for children, teachers and local villagers, these Elephant Pumps have been used to establish school nutrition gardens. This allows each child to grow a bed of vegetables during the dry season to take home for their families. The schools can also use water to generate much needed income through livestock projects, fruit tree nurseries and irrigated agriculture.

The impact for girls is especially significant when sustainable supplies of clean water are established in and around poor rural schools. At present, girls may arrive at school late due to spending hours collecting water for their family each morning. Some girls may then be beaten by teachers due to being late and could even miss further lessons if these teachers send them to collect water as a punishment (where there is no supply of water at the school). The personal security of girls who walk long distances to collect water is also an issue, since there is a high prevalence of rape. This has contributed to a large proportion of 16 yr-old girls being HIV+ in some parts of Zimbabwe.

Village pumps are usually sited at the most vulnerable homesteads such as child-headed households. Many thousands of such households now exist in Zimbabwe as the AIDS pandemic commonly results in the death of both parents. With children as young as seven years old being left alone to fend for themselves, it is vital that they get assistance. In addition to the desperate poverty of this situation, there is also considerable stigma attached to orphans whose parents are thought to have died from AIDS. They can become outcasts and may be blamed when eggs, chickens and vegetables are stolen since they have no parents to defend them and in some cases because these children are indeed forced to steel to survive.

An Elephant Pump at such a homestead provides these children with a ready supply of clean water for productive irrigation. It also provides clean drinking water for them and quite a number of the surrounding homesteads. This means that such children become the gate-keepers of a valuable community resource which helps to elevate their social status.

A DFID grant of GBP94,230 was agreed in July 2005 for the first year of what could be a five-year programme. This initial grant will enable Pump Aid to build its capacity in Zimbabwe to assist several other NGO's in the provision of sustainable water supplies for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this troubled country. In the first year, Pump Aid will mainly be working with CAFOD and CARE, who have also benefited from new DFID funding under the PRP WATSAN programme. In partnership with CARE and CAFOD, Pump Aid will install around 500 Elephant Pumps over the next year, and a range of related activities will also be conducted to improve agricultural production, health, hygiene and sanitation.

It is hoped that funding for this DFID PRP WATSAN programme will be increased in subsequent years allowing Pump Aid to respond to the demand for training and partnership which has come from other NGO's right across Zimbabwe. Pump Aid is keen to share skills and experiences so that other organisations can replicate the success of their community-driven approach to rural water supply. Pump Aid has also received requests for partnership, training and seeding from governments and NGO's in 21 other African countries.

A key component of Pump Aid's programme is the Elephant Pump. This low-cost technology, which can be classed in the rope-pump family, was developed by Pump Aid staff in Zimbabwe from 1996 - 2000. Since the year 2000 over 1,200 pumps have been installed which are now used by around quarter of a million Zimbabweans. The integrated design is easily maintained by the pump user at extremely low cost and includes a low cost hand-dug well system up to 30 metres deep. It is suitable and sustainable for even the most remote areas and, with an extraction rate of around one litre per second, it can be used to irrigate nutrition gardens.

The Elephant Pump needs very little energy to lift a certain volume of water due to the continuous flow and reduced friction, and it can be adapted to use a double crank 'bicycle' system. It is therefore safe, easy and fun to use even for children and the elderly. At schools where the bicycle system is installed, children have been known to come to school early to 'play' on the pump while they fill up a tank of water for the school vegetable garden. This contrasts sharply to the situation where children had to walk miles for the arduous chore of fetching water before Elephant Pumps were installed.

The Elephant Pump is fully enclosed to avoid contamination, which means there is no danger of children or animals falling in and with the self-filtering well design (and the self-cleaning no-clog pump) this results in water of extremely high quality. The pump is built and maintained using only materials that are locally available in Zimbabwe. Beneficiaries contribute bricks, sand and unskilled labour during the construction process which leads to a strong sense of ownership. The pump is easily maintained by women, men or children, as spare parts can be made by the beneficiaries themselves if necessary at the village level, with a little training from the Pump Aid staff. Should water tables fall, the pump can easily be lifted out by hand and the well deepened.

The Executive Director for Pump Aid Ian Thorpe said, "We are proud to be associated with DFID as we work together to tackle extreme poverty in Africa."

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