Rotarians from Norfolk were invited to cut the red ribbon on a new tractor donated to a self-help children's charity in Zambia.

Farmer Robin Baines and Rod Stone, of Wroxham Bure Valley Rotary, helped to raise more than £15,500 to send a tractor to an orphanage near Kitwe in Zambia's Copper Belt.

The 55hp John Deere tractor will be used to clear about 700 acres of land for cultivation by the Faith Orphanage Foundation, which cares for HIV Aids orphans.

Mr Baines, of Hoveton, who runs an extensive contracting operation and specialises in growing potatoes, visited Kitwe with his wife, Hilary about six years ago. Her sister, Liz, a missionary teaching nurse in northern Zambia, had trained a founder of the orphanage, Faith, who started a skills training centre for youngsters in agriculture and horticulture. She took on areas of village land, which was then used to demonstrate good farming techniques to encourage the move away from subsistence to more modern techniques.

By growing crops, partly for food and also to raise funds to improve financial self-sufficiency, the cultivated area has gradually increased. When Faith visited Norfolk three years ago, she joking said to Mr Baines that at her current rate of expansion, a tractor would be needed next.

A seed was sown. Mr Baines and Mr Stone, with backing from fellow Rotarians Stuart Kemp and Chris Billing, raised match-funding from the eastern district and Rotary International Fund.

The tractor, with spares, and two-furrow reversible plough donated by John and Brian Reynolds, was shipped with desks, sewing machines and hand tools from Aylsham. Thanks to Hugh Hollis, of Global Shipping from Felixstowe and Eric Britt, of Ipswich-based Tools with a Mission and Martin Fuller, of agricultural engineers Ben Burgess & Co, it arrived on April 25. The local rotary club, Kitwe North, led by William Nyirenda, helped to secure the container's safe arrival.

Mr Baines and Mr Stone, who recently travelled to Kitwe, were invited on arrival to present the tractor keys on behalf of Wroxham Rotary, cut a ribbon. Mr Baines drove the tractor around the skills centre, demonstrating the plough's hydraulic turnover.

They then inspected a new 30 ha farm site, where clearance by hand had already begun. The first three classrooms of a farming school, which will provide facilities for up to 150 students, had been built.

Mr Baines saw crops of sweet potatoes and maize alongside trees and small-scale livestock enterprises with pigs, goats and poultry. A well has been sunk, again by hand, securing a source of water.

Then they saw another 15 ha site, which has been cleared and cropped with bananas and maize – trickle irrigated.

During the visit, the foundation also acquired a further 200 ha of land, which will be used to forward the charity's aims.

Wroxham Rotary's tractor will be used on four sites, the skills' centre, the 30 ha farming school and demonstration farm, 15ha of irrigated banana and maize farm and the new site north of Kitwe.

A senior Kitwe Rotary official, Mr Nyirenda, will provide a link between the Norfolk group and the foundation. The orphanage helps to provide and support a total of 6,500 youngsters.