How to display category information from a custom post

I have created a page that uses custom posts: http://www.africanhealthleadership.org/resources/toolkit/

Each tool (Preparation, Assessment, etc.) is a custom post. On the WP Admin, each tool is a category; each category has a “description” field. I would like to output those descriptions on the Toolkit page. I tried using this and nothing displayed:
<?php echo category_description( $category ); ?>

Right now, the descriptions are hard-coded in to the page. The one for preparation begins
“Preparation tools establish…”

Thank you for any ideas!
Jeff

Here is the loop that spits out the custom post type:

<?php
query_posts( array( 'post_type' => 'portfolio', 'toolkit' => 'preparation' ) );
//the loop start here
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
?>
<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endwhile; endif; wp_reset_query(); ?>

And Here is the code from functions.php

add_action('init', 'portfolio_register');

function portfolio_register() {

$labels = array(
    'name' => _x('Toolkit', 'post type general name'),
    'singular_name' => _x('Tool', 'post type singular name'),
    'add_new' => _x('Add New Tool', 'tool'),
    'add_new_item' => __('Add New Tool'),
    'edit_item' => __('Edit Tool'),
    'new_item' => __('New Tool'),
    'view_item' => __('View Tool'),
    'search_items' => __('Search Toolkit'),
    'not_found' =>  __('Nothing found'),
    'not_found_in_trash' => __('Nothing found in Trash'),
    'parent_item_colon' => ''
);

$args = array(
    'labels' => $labels,
    'public' => true,
    'publicly_queryable' => true,
    'show_ui' => true,
    'query_var' => true,
    'menu_icon' => get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/article16.png',
    'rewrite' => true,
    'capability_type' => 'post',
    'hierarchical' => false,
    'menu_position' => null,
    'supports' => array('title','editor','thumbnail')
  ); 

register_post_type( 'portfolio' , $args );
}

register_taxonomy("toolkit", array("portfolio"), array("hierarchical" => true,   "label"     => "Tool Categories", "singular_label" => "Tool", "rewrite" => true));

To get the taxonomy term for this particular post, then what you need is wp_get_post_terms($post->ID, 'yourtaxonomyname')

This will return an array of terms in the specified taxonomy for the post specified. The codex page is: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_get_post_terms

If you’re after a specific term in a taxonomy get_term($taxonomy_name, $term_id). You can also get all terms for a taxonomy using get_terms()

Here’s an example of how to use it.

$terms = wp_get_post_terms($post->ID,'toolkit');  
foreach ($terms as $term) {  
    echo $term->description;  
}