"Give a man a fish...

And feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime." This age-old adage has proved very applicable in our approach to development here. In the two months we've been here, we have sat with and listened to many people, learned from Jeff & Michelle's past experiences and researched different project ideas. Now we are just beginning to see how we may combine our foreign knowledge with the local knowledge and design creative solutions for real needs, for "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

When we talk about development, we here think of human development: physical, emotional & spiritual. We want to help meet people's basic physical needs, connect emotionally with them as fellow human beings and grow together in the knowledge & wisdom of Christ. We have several different ideas on how some of these nice thoughts might actually come to fruition. For the sake of keeping things short, I just wanted to let you know about some of the income generation ideas that are developing as we speak, and a special thanks to Meyer Bros. in Hamilton for helping purchase some tools we needed for these projects!:

• Oil press: to help local farmers increase their crop diversity by extracting oil from seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, etc.) for cooking oil, lotions & soaps, & possibly bio-diesel
  
• Fuel bricks: using by-products of seed cake, saw dust, biomass, etc. to help reduce deforestation and provide an alternative fuel source
  
• Chicken coop, goat rearing, & bee keeping: designing & building housing for these local animals to increase their number and food availability
  
• Ox plow: to help improve farming techniques and allow for more land to be cultivated
  
• Church construction: we have designed a plan for a longer lasting, stronger, and more quickly erectable church for new churches in the area

The idea with all of these project is that we would partner with the people in each situation, not just give them a "fish." We desire for people to have dignity & ownership over the work they do. By combining knowledge & resources, we can create sustainable & effective solutions to those needs.

PS We are leaving tomorrow for 10 days in Sudan, where we will be meeting with local government officials to begin the process of establishing NGO status for the SudanVenture Resource Center. Read more at Jeff & Michelle's weblog. Please pray that we would be connected with the right people and for our conversations with them. We'll send an update upon our return!