About Pump Aid

Pump Aid is a water and sanitation charity that aims to relieve poverty through the provision of clean drinking water and safe sanitation. We doe this by building Elephant pumps and toilets in rural communities in southern Africa. By working closely with communities, Pump Aid has developed an approach that creates a better understanding of and demand for improvements to water supply, sanitation, health and agriculture production.

A school Elephant pump helps children in a number of ways:

1.      It reduces water borne disease thereby increasing school attendance

2.      It allows each child to grow vegetables in the school nutrition garden

3.      It stops the practise of sending girls long distances to collect drinking water for the school, so they are able to spend more time in lessons.

Pump Aid’s approach is very different from other organisations as staff are recruited from the areas of operation. Pump Aid responds to demand and helps the communities reach decisions as to where pumps are sited and how they are used. Villagers provide construction materials such as bricks and sand. They are also present and actively participate during the building of each pump and toilet. This creates a sense of ownership and is also part of the training process that allows communities to maintain their water and sanitation installations.

Our history

Pump Aid was founded in 1998 by Ian Thorpe, Amos Chitungo and Tendai Mawunga. They were teaching at the same rural school in Zimbabwe, when several of their students died after drinking contaminated water from the local well. Ian, Amos and Tendai worked voluntarily, adapting an ancient Chinese design to produce the Elephant Pump, an easily maintained technology that provides reliable access to clean water. Pump Aid later developed the Elephant Toilet which provides a sustainable and appropriate sanitation solution.

Since its start in 1998, Pump Aid has installed nearly 4,000 pumps enabling over one million people to have access to clean drinking water and irrigation for nutrition gardens. Improved sanitation and community training (to impart the knowledge needed to improve health and agricultural production) are also a key part of Pump Aid’s work. Pump Aid works to relieve hardship and suffering in some of the poorest parts of Africa by: improving the availability and quality of water for domestic consumption; promoting the productive use of water in agriculture and tree-planting; and providing sanitation with health education. 

Over the next five years, Pump Aid plans to establish sustainable clean water supplies for 8 million of the poorest people in southern Africa, improved sanitation for 5 million and improved food security for 4 million.