Graphic: how the Elephant Pump works

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At 7am, 300 children flock to the Bright Vision orphanage perched on the slopes of Mount Ngalayapakamew. Thirsty and hungry, they are ready for breakfast.

Women from the village of Chamadinga have been busy since daybreak preparing for their arrival, collecting water from the well and heating porridge on an open fire behind the collection of little huts.

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• Graphic: how the Elephant Pump works

In Malawi, HIV/Aids is the biggest cause of death of parents, though that is rarely mentioned in this deeply conservative, Christian country. Others die in childbirth, but cholera and diarrhoeal disease remain major killers. As a result, half a million children in Malawi are orphans.

In keeping with African custom, the orphans spend their nights in the village with their extended families or in households headed by children. But this is a poor village. There is no spare food or clothing for orphans. Most are dressed in torn and ragged clothes, and there are certainly no shoes or toys.

The Bright Vision orphanage was set up by village elders to make sure that the children can at least have two good meals a day. That means a back-breaking 200 litres of water must be collected from the well and carried back to the huts – a laborious task given that the tiny can has to be lowered into the well an endless number of times to fill 20-litre containers. The whole process takes about two hours. It is repeated for lunch.

But news of the Elephant Pump, cheap and more reliable than traditional African piston pumps, is spreading across Malawi. The outbreak of cholera in nearby Zimbabwe is a frightening reminder of what happens when pumps break down.

So when Stanley Chapota and Hosiah Malemba, founders of Bright Vision, heard that Pump Aid was looking for demonstration sites, they jumped at the chance.

When The Times arrives to see the newly installed pump, the ancient open well has already been lined with new bricks and the cylindrical wellhead is taking shape.

Stanley and Hosiah hope that it will cut the time spent collecting water by more than half. The simple construction means that children will be able to help because all they need to do is turn the handles.

Most importantly, it means that the water supply is clean and fresh so diarrhoeal diseases will be eradicated. It takes just four hours for the new pump to be installed by pump builders from Zimbabweand men from the village who get paid for their labour. The villagers have also provided the bricks.

The well will not be ready in time for today’s lunch, so Fonida, Fatuma and Modesta, in charge of catering for the 300 orphans, come in early to draw enough water for the children.

They spend the morning making nsima, the staple meal of Malawi made of maize, in a huge cooking pot. Nsima needs to be “paddled”, rather than stirred, to make a thick paste, and it is hot work in the midday sun. A vat of boiling water is then moved on to the fire and the beans prepared.

The children, who have spent much of the morning crowded around the partially constructed well, gather in the classroom for singing before lunch. They then file out by age in groups of 10 or 12, queueing patiently to have their hands washed by the village women, then queueing again for food.

The first hundred children are served lunch and a drink from the same bowl. The orphanage cannot afford separate cups for drinksand has only enough dishes for 100 children, so they are all washed before the next group of children arrive for lunch.

“You have no idea what a difference this pump will make,” says Modesta Banda, as she helps to wash the hands of Daniel, aged 4. “It will be so much easier to draw, but the most important thing is that we know it’s clean.”

She plans to plant tomatoes and cabbages by the pump overflow to add variety to the children’s food. “We have already said we want the Elephant toilet too,” she says.

While Pump Aid is using expert pump builders from Zimbabwe to get the project going in Malawi, local men and women will be trained to do the task as soon as funds allow.

“It is very important for us to empower the community by training them to build the pumps and maintain them,” says Elizabeth Maneya, Pump Aid’s acting director in Malawi. “We do not have funding in place for that yet so we can only use locals on a casual basis, but we hope to start proper training when we raise the money.”

Pump Aid is one of three charities being supported by The Times this year.

AquAid, the water cooler manufacturer, will donate £2 to Pump Aid for every £1 donated by readers