Community Development in Nigeria, by Will Reed, Back2Back Nigeria Staff

Over the last couple months in Back2Back Nigeria, the “Dry Season Farming” projects that were started in the Kisayhip Village have progressed very well. For quite a while it was a bit boring as we watched waiting for the fruit of the peoples labor to appear.

In Kisayhip ‘A’ (the village is split in two parts Kisayhip ‘A’ and ‘B’) the women have worked very hard to cultivate a large crop of tomatoes. A couple weeks ago the women began to harvest and sell the tomatoes. Today, they have made over $300, a large amount here in Nigeria. They will continue to harvest the tomatoes for a couple more weeks hopefully bringing their total net profit to between $500-$600. We are excited to see how this money will be used in the three categories agreed upon (1/3 goes to the women who worked, 1/3 goes back into the project and 1/3 is set aside for a community development project led by the women).

Kisayhip Youth Developments farming is also starting to pick up. The potatoes they planted have started to come up (at least the plant part that grows out of the ground). They have added fertilizer to help the potatoes grow and continue to work the farm keeping it healthy. They plan to harvest the potatoes sometime in August.

With both of these projects, it wasn’t very exciting until we could start to see the fruit of the labor. Both the tomatoes and potatoes need time to develop and we must wait patiently knowing something is happening even if we can’t see it.

Community Development as a whole is a lot like this process. We plant seeds in peoples lives in the form of character, integrity or love and have to trust that God is doing something even while we can’t physically see it. It takes time for the seed to become a plant growing out of the ground and even more time for the plant to yield fruit that will be beneficial.

In the lives of some of the youth in Kisayhip Youth Development and the women in Kisayhip ‘A’ we are starting to see the plant come out of the ground and we wait in eager expectation for God to produce the harvest of fruit that will benefit their community.

Please pray for the physical harvest of food that will feed and/or provide money for the people in the Kisayhip village, and also pray for the spiritual harvest God is cultivating in the lives of the people here.

Local women contribute to the project by farming