A three-time All-American during her career as a Gator, Nelson twice earned the SEC’s Pitcher of the Year award and ended her career in the all-time top 10 in pitching victories and games played. During her stellar four-year career in Gainesville, Nelson posted a program best 0.99 ERA, with sixty shutouts and 1,116 strikeouts, the latter a record that stood for more than ten years before it was broken by Kelly Barnhill earlier this year.
After her collegiate career, many softball fans lost track of Nelson, as she elected to leave the game behind to pursue another passion: Law. After graduating from law school in 2014, Nelson passed the bar exam and entered the legal world. She began working in California, but it was neither on the softball diamond nor in the world of jurisprudence that she would make her greatest impact.
In 2011, Nelson had paid a visit to the nation of Uganda. She spent four months living in the African country, and while she was there, she made a commitment. “I promised myself in 2011 that I would come back here and do something for the people in this town [in Uganda].”
Nelson’s passion for Uganda and the people of the impoverished nation began to develop even during her collegiate years. “I somewhat had a very naive and ignorant view of what I wanted to do,” Nelson said. “But I had always been interested in what was going on in Africa. I became very interested in the war that happened in some certain regions.”
An African warlord had rampaged through parts of the nation, wielding incredible power over the poor and impoverished, leaving vast destruction in his wake and wreaking havoc on already-suffering people.
Her developing passion and interest in the nation’s plight led to what Nelson refers to as “becoming a small activist,” joining a relevant club on the University of Florida’s campus that was trying to deal with the issue. She also began to devote time and research into the issues plaguing the nation, specifically the regions hurt most by the warlord’s path of destruction.
After her softball career ended and she graduated from Florida, Nelson embarked on a short professional career in the circle in Japan. It was in the interim between her graduation and the beginning of law school that she spent her initial time in Uganda, focusing on the issue of developing places that were drastically underdeveloped. During the four months that she spent “on the ground” in Uganda, Nelson got first-hand experience with what the peoples’ day-to-day lives looked like, and it was at that time that she made the promise to one-day return. “Even though I had to go all the way through law school, I made the promise that one day I was going to come back and do something good for this community,” Nelson shared.
While the word ‘empathetic’ certainly fits Nelson, it does little to accurately describe her and the voracious passion with which she has represented the Ugandan people since that 2011 venture.
Even as she worked her way through law school, later joining the California bar and working in the Los Angeles County jail system, the desire burned inside her to fulfill her promise to return to Uganda and help the people with whom she had fallen in love.
Finally, it was time to fulfill that promise. In July of 2018, Nelson took leave from her job in California. As she did so, she also took a great professional risk: With the plan to spend a year living strictly in Uganda, her employer could not guarantee her a position upon her return. Nevertheless, the time was right and soon, Stacey Nelson was a semi-permanent Uganda resident.
When Nelson reached Uganda, she connected with a non-government organization, another term for a charity. As she worked with the group and noticed the way they did things, she picked up on an anomaly: The focus was on training people to get jobs, but her own research showed the end result to be minimal in that area.
Soon thereafter, a friend stateside connected Nelson with a Ugandan friend, and soon the Kope (CO-peh) Foundation was born. “Our approach was that we did not want to be like any of the other organizations,” Nelson said. “The organizations that we see where they have their own ideas that they impose on people and say ‘this is what’s going to be good for you, and here’s how to do it.’ We see a lot of that. We spent two entire months researching. Many of the community members farm, and only 5% of those people are able to make profits on what they grow. 90% of them are just farming to eat, and if they don’t have a good farming season, then they’re going to have trouble eating. So that was one of the many initiatives we wanted to get started on.”
The Kope Foundation’s name was not chosen by chance or by accident; rather, even the name itself has a special meaning. “We chose that name because every other charity in the area had a name that made the people sound almost pitiful,” Nelson said. “In that it’s the ‘helping hands’ organization, or ‘giving food to the hungry’, but we wanted something that when the people heard it, they felt empowered. That’s what we want to do, to empower them and give them strength. Kope is a standard greeting that, loosely translated, means ‘no problem.”
Far from the traditional charity founder, Nelson doesn’t believe in the stereotypical high-rise office with air conditioning and comfortable chairs. During her time in Uganda, she spent much of her time in the community and in the fields, working with the citizens and investing in their futures, as she teaches them to do the same for themselves.
During her tenure living in Uganda, Nelson spent some time working with the Ugandan national softball team and instructing them on some of the finer points of the game, but it’s a safe bet that she would prefer her return to the diamond, however brief, take a backseat to her many other projects while in Africa, a list that also included a drive to gather feminine hygiene products for the young women in the village.
As she reflects on the work that she has done, Nelson also offers a warning. “Be careful what you’re donating to and who you’re giving money to,” she says. Offering a warning from first-hand experience, she added, “It can’t just be an idea that you’re inspired by. Look into who’s behind it and where the money is actually going.”
In early June, Nelson returned to the States from her year-long stay in Uganda. She did so with tears in her eyes as she left Uganda behind, but said she was confident in the leadership structure that she had built and the capable hands in which the Kope Foundation’s boots-on-the-ground endeavors were left.
Even though she’s now back on the mainland – and returned to the legal world, back to the job that she had left behind – Nelson can’t stay away for long: She already has a return trip to Uganda planned for the fall.
