How your donations have made a difference to KAASO in 2025! 🙏🌱
An update on the 9-acre piece of land purchased in 2024: The “Kabaseke KAASO Coffee Project”
In September 2024, Unity is Strength helped St Paul KAASO Primary School to buy a 9-acre piece of land on which they could run income-generating projects to help cover the school’s running costs and for crops to feed the students. This piece of land is called “Kabaseke”, the name of the area in which it is located.
Thanks to your generous support, this project has made tremendous progress over the past year. Remember the coffee seedling vouchers that were available last Christmas?! Those seedlings are now thriving on the new piece of land and growing into delicious coffee plants for KAASO to harvest in the future!
The land is now fully in use, supporting coffee, banana, and maize production, while also providing practical learning opportunities and food security for the KAASO school community.
Find out more about the work that has been completed so far, with KAASO’s achievements over the past year and their plans for the future by following the link below.
KAASO staff at Kabaseke and students at the Sports Competitions
An additional 15 acres are about to be purchased!
Following the success of the Kabaseke land purchase, we are delighted to have been able to support KAASO in starting the process to buy another piece of land, which totals 15 acres!
When Rob and I visited KAASO in 2023 and discussed the land purchase idea with Dominic and Rose, they estimated that 30 acres of owned land would be enough (once set up and providing an income) for KAASO to run without additional input from Unity is Strength. We never thought we would be anywhere near the 30 acre mark just 2 years later.
It is you, our supporters, who have made this possible, so please accept our sincere thanks and gratitude! None of this would be possible without your generous contributions.
KAASO students wearing their 25-year KAASO Anniversary t-shirts earlier this year!
Unity is Strength was first set up because of the significant challenges KAASO faced in meeting the rising food costs for the students and being able to regularly pay its teachers and staff members. We have always been passionate about developing income-generating projects to help the school become fully self-sustainable in the future.
Coffee is Uganda’s most valuable cash crop, so enabling KAASO to purchase land to grow, and in future sell, their own coffee will make a huge difference to covering many of the school’s expenses.
We can’t wait to keep you updated on everything there is to come and one day, be able to offer some KAASO Coffee for sale!
Ambrose Katende (a former KAASO student) and one of his sponsor students
Although the story below is not directly connected with Unity is Strength’s work, we wanted to share it with you as it completely blew us away. Ambrose Katende is a former KAASO student who the Hulton-Harrop family supported through university.
In one of our previous newsletters, we mentioned that Ambrose and his family are now sponsoring an incredible 7 students through their education in Uganda. One of those students recently completed his course in Civil Engineering and this is the message we received from Ambrose describing what it meant to him.
“Today, one of the children we have been supporting completed his Certificate course in Civil Engineering. He called me, full of gratitude, as he left school. Moments like these remind me why I have always wished to extend the same support I once received to as many others as I can.
When I made a pledge back in 2017 to support where I could, I had no idea how the journey would unfold. Today, I am humbled and deeply moved to see the first fruit of that commitment.
All of this has been possible because you supported me through my own academic journey. Your generosity, guidance, and belief in me laid the foundation that allows me to support others now.
Thank you very much for everything. Your impact continues to grow through the lives of those I am now able to help.”
Ambrose Katende speaking; his sponsor student is standing behind him in the black shirt
It’s Giving Tuesday!
Giving Tuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the last decade, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.
We wanted to do something a little bit different this Giving Tuesday and rather than ask for donations, we would love to hear your thoughts on the work we are doing as Unity is Strength and whether there is anything missing or anything in particular you would like to hear more about from KAASO? We will do our best to make this happen in 2026! Thank you in advance.
Also, If you know someone who might be inspired or interested in this work, please consider sharing this post with them. We’d love to be able to spread the word more about KAASO and share their fantastic story!
Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed hearing about this year’s achievements and updates!
