Community Connect
A Practical Gospel
At Equip & Send Africa we don't only want to share the gospel, we want to live it.
As stated in Proverbs, it is better to have a neighbour nearby than a brother far away—and that is what we want to be, a close neighbour.
After moving to Mboole two years ago and immersing ourselves in the community, several points grasped our attention and moved our hearts:
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Drought
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Lack of access to clean water
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Lack of strategies to make farming sustainable
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Unrealiable access to medical support
Drought Relief
When we arrived in Zambia, the region was in the midst of one of the most severe droughts in recent years. After two consecutive seasons of poor rainfall, many families experienced failed maize harvests. As maize is the country's staple crop, the crop failure resulted in widespread food shortages and hunger.
As a registered foundation, and through the favour and cooperation of the relevant authorities, we were granted permission to purchase and distribute subsidised mealie meal produced from maize released from the government's strategic grain reserves. This enabled us to provide affordable mealie meal to hundreds of families throughout the drought, ensuring that many households had access to their most basic daily food.
Thankfully, the rains have now returned in abundance, and this past growing season has produced excellent harvests. Most families are once again able to feed themselves from their own fields.
However, not everyone has been able to recover. Within our community there remain vulnerable households, particularly those headed by widows and those caring for orphaned children. For this reason, our feeding programme continues, focusing specifically on supporting these families with their ongoing nutritional needs.
Access to clean drinking water
As we began our work in Zambia during the height of the drought, we faced the same challenge as the surrounding community: a lack of reliable access to clean drinking water.
To meet this need, we drilled a borehole for our mission base. Rather than keeping it solely for our own use, we opened it to the community by installing a 5,000-litre storage tank where families could collect clean water. Every day, people from the surrounding villages fill 20-litre containers and carry them home, providing their households with safe drinking water.
As the need became increasingly evident, we went on to drill two additional community boreholes in other areas of Mboole, extending access to clean water to many more families.
Although the drought has come to an end, the need for clean, safe drinking water remains. Access to our boreholes continues year-round, and we remain committed to serving the community by ensuring that this essential resource is available for as long as it is needed.
Making farming sustainable
In many farming communities around us, maize production relies heavily on purchased seed each planting season. This is because many commonly used maize varieties are hybrids, which means that seed saved from one harvest does not reliably produce the same quality or yield in the following season. As a result, farmers need to invest in new seed every year, creating an ongoing financial burden.
For this reason, we are experimenting with alternative seed varieties that can be replanted from one harvest to the next. Our goal is to identify sustainable options that allow farmers to harvest both food for their families and seed for the following growing season.
Once we have identified a variety that performs well in our local conditions, we hope to make it available to farmers at an affordable cost, contributing to more sustainable and self-sufficient farming practices within the community.
We do not claim to be agricultural experts, but we are committed to learning, experimenting, and partnering with others to find practical solutions that work for the farmers we serve.
Novel access to medical support
Recently, we had the privilege of hosting a medical family on our base for two weeks. With the father serving as a general practitioner and the mother as a dentist, they were able to provide much-needed medical care to more than 200 people from the surrounding community.
This visit was the beginning of a valuable partnership that we hope to strengthen in the years ahead. Through continued collaboration and annual medical outreach visits, we aim to increase access to healthcare and provide ongoing support to communities that have limited access to medical services.
Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father.
He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end. [...]
Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything
and that he had come from God and would return to God.
So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin.
Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him. [...]
After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked,
“Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am.
And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet.
I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you."
John 13:1-15