KUSP Collaborates with Public Schools and Enables Girls to Pursue Educational Goals in Kobulubulu, Uganda

KUSP is a volunteer-driven, hands-on charity enabling quality education to develop in the poorest public schools in the sub-county of Kobulubulu, in rural northeastern Uganda.

We listen and are responsive to the priorities set by the under-resourced schools and community, thereby fostering a collaborative relationship with the schools and community.

KUSP is a small organization dependent on individual donations for over 80% of its annual budget and on small grants from key organizational supporters.

We effectively use each and every donation to make a difference to the lives of students in the impoverished region of rural Uganda.

Our small size gives us the freedom to be quickly responsive to changing needs. Never has this been truer than during the 2020–2021 Covid pandemic. As an organic, vital small charity, we seek to stay very attuned to the changing needs and priorities of our collaborative partner schools in Kobulubulu, and the people who participate in them – the teachers, students, administrators, and parents.

What KUSP Does

We are working with four schools in Kobulubulu attended by over 3000 children.

Meet some of the children who have benefited from our programs:

Josiah, a third-grade student eager to learn math had no pencil or paper and shared a text book with 9 other children. The Four Schools Project is working to resolve these issues. 

Margaret and Josephine, who were our first Girls Scholarship students at Halcyon Boarding School, and are keeping up their studies during the pandemic by KUSP supplied solar lanterns, candlelight, and a borrowed computer. 

Irene, who failed her first attempt to qualify for finishing high school (upper secondary), then attended our Tutoring Camp to prepare for the national exams and passed in 2021 with flying colors. 

Naume and Eunice, the two female teachers who are providing leadership for the KUSP “Ladies Choice” Sanitary Pad Project as they seek to implement sanitary pad making into each of our four schools.

As our lead Education Consultant in Uganda, Susan Kituyi Rose, has told us, “Once you help these children, their worlds are opened up. They dream big dreams. Of becoming nurses, or teachers, or accountants or lawyers. You have now become part of their lives. And you must not stop now!”

Because of the way we partner with these children and their schools, your donation becomes a direct link to these children with names, and faces, and “big dreams.” You are connected to their futures. And we believe, their futures are connected to the whole of Uganda!

KUSP's Mission

KUSP's mission is to assist the children, with a special emphasis on girls, of Kobulubulu, Uganda to reach their educational goals and to become effective, productive citizens. 

OUR ROOTS

Lois Stovall, the founder and president of KUSP, also known as krma-USPartners, began this charity, a 501(c)3, in 2013 to help an under-resourced rural community in Kobulubulu move toward economic sustainability and educate their children. Until 2020, KUSP partnered with a village savings and loan group, known as KRMA. Together we developed the Cassava Project. Using a reinvestment model decreasing KUSP’s annual grant of funds until KRMA could manage their own agricultural collective to improve the lives of KRMA members, their families, and the surrounding community by expanding small family garden plots to a 50 acres agricultural collective. 

As the women farmers of the Cassava Project developed their business capacities for discipline, organizational oversight, teamwork and accountability, KUSP identified new projects in Kobulubulu Sub-County focused on the community’s four public schools. After the village savings group KRMA attained self-sufficiency, KUSP embraced educational goals in Kobulubulu as its primary focus.

What’s in a Name

Following the Cassava Project's successful completion in 2020, our organization began to transition to KUSP, away from being known as KRMA-US Partners, so as not to be confused with our friends in Kobulubulu’s KRMA savings group.

Althouth KUSP keeps the same initials of our name, our formal legal name remains krma-USPartners, a charity organized under the laws of Maryland, based outside of Washington, D.C.

Expanding the Vision

KUSP expanded the vision of economic sustainability, the importance of education and the empowerment of women and girls to encompass the underserved regions of Kobulubulu Sub-County in Kaberamaido District. 

Covid 19 and local leadership

We have returned to Kobulubulu every year since that first year in 2012, and now that Covid 19 is preventing travel, we have an especially competent team of Ugandans who work to fulfill the collaborative goals of KUSP and the government-sponsored public schools of Kobulubulu.