BLACKSBURG, Va. \u2014 When the van carrying Virginia Tech students turned onto the dirt road leading to her farm, Vivian Zilo-Ncana began to sing.<\/p>\n
Dozens of people from her South African township joined in, ululating and dancing. As students and faculty stepped out of the van, people in the crowd reached for their hands and pulled them into the celebration.<\/p>\n
At the edge of the gathering sat a gleaming red tractor \u2014 a gift from Virginia Tech students, faculty, alumni, and friends. The result of two years of fundraising, the machine will help Zilo-Ncana increase her farm\u2019s productivity and feed children and families in the Khayelitsha township of roughly 400,000 residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are making a huge difference, not only for me, but for the entire community,\u201d she told the group. \u201cThis tractor isn\u2019t just a piece of machinery. It represents the shift from struggling to survive to finally having the capacity to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zilo-Ncana named it The Link \u2014 a fitting moniker for a partnership that now spans three years and nearly 8,000 miles.<\/p>\n
Since 2023, faculty members and students have worked alongside Zilo-Ncana and other South African partners through\u00a0Connect and Serve Communities Abroad<\/a>, a service-based winter study abroad course focused on food security. The visit lasts two weeks, but the collaboration extends year-round through classwork, research, and sustained engagement \u2014 the land-grant model at work across continents.<\/p>\n Growing vegetables from sand<\/p>\n Under the glare of the midday sun in 95-degree heat,\u00a0crop and soil sciences<\/a>\u00a0major Zach Gilbreath crouched in the dirt beside Khayelitsha resident Bulelwa Dyonta, measuring out a spinach bed with string and tape. They checked the spacing together, pressed seedlings into the sandy soil, and talked through nutrient balance and water retention.<\/p>\n The lesson was drafted months earlier in Professor\u00a0Ozzie Abaye<\/a>\u2019s Agriculture, Global Food Security and Health class, then refined in virtual meetings with Zilo-Ncana\u2019s team before the group arrived.<\/p>\n Over the next two days on the farm, the students led 15 women from Khayelitsha in hands-on workshops on soil preparation, seedling production, buffer plants, and intercropping techniques.<\/p>\n \u201cThese women are going to go back to their township and teach their families, teach their neighbors, and teach other people in their communities how to produce their own food,\u201d Gilbreath said. \u201cThe knowledge just spreads from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Known in her community as \u201cMama Vivian,\u201d Zilo-Ncana founded Iliso Care Society in 2004 as a nonprofit nutrition program. Her organization has since expanded into youth development, school feeding programs, and agricultural training.<\/p>\n In 2023, the government granted her land near Cape Town to grow food for surrounding communities. She now farms roughly 75 acres, producing vegetables that support three daily meals for local schoolchildren and supplying surplus produce to 3,800 residents a week. The farm also serves as an agricultural training hub for about 100 people a month.<\/p>\n But the land came with few resources. The soil is more than 95 percent sand. Equipment is scarce. For years, Zilo-Ncana relied on rented machinery to prepare the fields, limiting how much she could plant.<\/p>\n When Abaye and fellow\u00a0College of Agriculture and Life Sciences<\/a>\u00a0faculty members\u00a0Mark Reiter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Pete Ziegler<\/a>\u00a0first visited the farm in 2023, they saw those challenges as opportunities to serve.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we had the tools to help,\u201d Abaye said. \u201cWe saw her ambition to feed her community and her love for her community. That was the driving force for us \u2014 to equip her with the agricultural training to match her ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n The tractor, which Abaye and her students fundraised for over two years by soliciting friends, family, and alumni, is only the most recent example of how the university is helping.<\/p>\n Reiter, professor and director of the\u00a0Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center<\/a>, and his graduate student set up research plots to determine which soil treatments would help the farm hold nutrients, retain water, and produce more reliable yields. Over time, those trials became the Western Cape Research and Education Farm, or WeCaRE, a Virginia Tech research site embedded within Zilo-Ncana\u2019s fields.<\/p>\n Since the trials began, improved soil management has helped the farm triple its yields.<\/p>\n \u201cOur job is to give people the tools they need to grow food,\u201d Reiter said. \u201cWe\u2019re identifying the soil practices that will help Mama Vivian grow more productively and more consistently. At the same time, we\u2019re learning how sandy soils respond to organic inputs under heat, wind, and water stress \u2014 challenges that farmers in parts of Virginia<\/a> are also facing.\u201d<\/p>\n Edible soil and lingering lessons<\/p>\n Zilo-Ncana is one of three service partners in the Connect and Serve program. Over the past three years, students have also worked with Oude Molen Eco Garden, an educational community garden, to develop informational signs, seed packets, and horticulture lessons for the more than 1,000 children that visit the garden each month.<\/p>\n On a hot summer day in January, Virginia Tech students weeded, planted, and harvested seeds. Afterward, they gathered with local schoolchildren around a long wooden picnic table to build \u201cedible soil\u201d using clear plastic cups, cereal, crushed cookies, and gummy worms. Environmental science major Steven Conder helped lead the lesson, explaining how organic matter, organisms, and minerals work together beneath the surface.<\/p>\n Students developed the activity during the fall semester in Blacksburg and refined it in virtual meetings with the garden\u2019s manager, Kelly Mansfield, before the trip. It will now become part of her regular school programming.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you see around you is what they\u2019ve helped build,\u201d Mansfield said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m still building on it.<\/p>\n Establishing food forests<\/p>\n At Sakumlandela Primary School in Khayelitsha, Virginia Tech students helped turn a 50-by-50-foot patch of dirt into a fledgling food forest. Over six hours, they cleared grass and rubble, added compost, and installed thousands of plants, including fruit trees, that will grow into a canopy of trees, shrubs, and groundcover.<\/p>\n In a township with limited access to green space and fresh produce, the Sakumlandela food forest will provide herbs for the school kitchen and serve as an outdoor classroom.<\/p>\n The installation was the second supported through their three-year partnership with Urban Harvest, a nonprofit that builds regenerative school and community gardens.<\/p>\n Part of the preparation began in Abaye\u2019s course in the fall, where students created educational materials to accompany the installation. They designed plant labels with QR codes linking each species to Urban Harvest\u2019s website, giving teachers and students a way to learn more about what\u2019s growing on campus.<\/p>\n The new site builds on earlier work at another township school, where students helped establish a 1,100-square-foot garden and developed lesson plans still in use.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir contribution was not symbolic,\u201d Urban Harvest founder Ben Getz said. \u201cIt was substantial and lasting.\u201d<\/p>\n A partnership year-round<\/p>\n The projects students implement in South Africa begin months earlier in Blacksburg and continue well beyond the trip.<\/p>\n In the fall, students team up and select projects identified by their service partners. Throughout the semester, they meet virtually with collaborators, draft lesson plans and materials, and revise them based on feedback. By the time they board the plane in January, the plans are ready to be put into action.<\/p>\n For many students, participating in the program is made possible through scholarship support from the\u00a0School of Plant and Environmental Sciences<\/a>, the\u00a0Global Education Office<\/a>, and long-standing partners including the Virginia Corn Board, the Virginia Soybean Board, and the Virginia Crop Improvement Association.<\/p>\n At Zilo-Ncana\u2019s farm, faculty members and students manage the WeCaRE research site, where compost and cover crop trials test ways to improve sandy soil. The side-by-side plots allow local growers to see which practices produce stronger crops, while the findings shape the next year\u2019s coursework.<\/p>\n For Zilo-Ncana, the consistency matters as much as the research.<\/p>\n \u201cWorking with Virginia Tech is different,\u201d she said. \u201cThey come back. They understand what we need, and they follow through.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in Blacksburg, students carry on that work through\u00a0Harvesting Hope<\/a>, a campus organization that raises awareness and funds to support Zilo-Ncana and Iliso Care Society. The group has held used clothing sales and sold hot chocolate to help fundraise for the new tractor.<\/p>\n Junior Lilliana Escobar helped found the organization in response to her South Africa study abroad experience. She said Abaye\u2019s class \u2014 and the trip that followed \u2014 shifted her perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cIt made me realize I was in the wrong field,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n After returning, Escobar changed her major to\u00a0agricultural and applied economics<\/a>\u00a0and added a minor in\u00a0global food security and health<\/a>. Starting Harvesting Hope, she said, was a way to extend the work once she returned home.<\/p>\n \u201cWe noticed all the socioeconomic challenges that Mama Vivian\u2019s community faces,\u201d she said. \u201cWe felt the need to become global citizens and do something about what we saw. But food insecurity is a worldwide issue, and we want to bring that awareness here too.\u201d<\/p>\n The link that endures<\/p>\n For Will Ubben, the experience also sparked a long-term commitment. He first traveled to South Africa on the Connect and Serve trip as an undergraduate studying\u00a0environmental science<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we were getting ready to leave, Mama Vivian grabbed my hand and said, \u2018Please don\u2019t go,\u2019\u201d Ubben recalled. \u201cThat\u2019s not something that will soon leave my mind. It became clear that I can make change here.\u201d<\/p>\n