Gladys Bulyaba and Jessica Davis founded Kugatta in an effort to bring families together that have been impacted by the complexities of intercountry adoption. In Luganda ‘Kugatta’ means ‘bringing together’ and since much of their work is centered around serving, empowering, preserving, and reconnecting families it seemed fitting to choose a name that represented that work in some capacity.
Gladys Bulyaba manages Kugatta in Uganda. She grew up in Uganda and studied information science. She has spent the greater part of her adult life helping individuals and families to enhance their individual and collective well-being. She has been very involved within the intercountry adoption community for many years helping adoptive families while in country. She is the founder and manager of Glad Research & Investigations. She helped our family find our adopted child’s mother when we began our search and she has helped countless adoptees, first families, and adoptive families since. She is an invaluable resource when it comes to finding information related to an adoptee’s history providing them with the truth and transparency they are so often in search of. She is certified in TBRI, has training in family reunification and trauma competent caregiving, as well as been mentored by some of the best social workers in Uganda. Helping adoptees and Ugandan families reconnect with the the loved ones they have been separated from is an important aspect of her work. For Gladys, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing a mother or father smile after seeing the child they had lost hope of ever seeing again. When adoptive families need answers on behalf of their adopted child she works diligently to find those answers. She is deeply committed to reconnecting adoptees with their relatives and culture as well as empowering vulnerable Ugandan families to prevent unnecessary separation in the first place.
Jessica Davis manages Kugatta on the US side. She and her husband adopted from Uganda in 2015 only to realize that their adopted child had been trafficked and unlawfully separated from her birth family through the intercountry adoption system. After a thorough investigation, she and her husband made the unprecedented decision to reunite their adopted child back with her Ugandan family. Since then she has been an outspoken advocate for intercountry adoption reform and feels a sense of responsibility to raise awareness about the many misconceptions and dark underbelly that intercounty adoption often entails. She has a strong passion to ensure adoptee voices are acknowledged and listened to and that Ugandan families who have been negatively impacted through intercountry adoption are given a platform to share their stories and reconnect with the loved one they have been separated from. She also feels compassion for the adoptive families that are doing their best to navigate these unexpected and often uncomfortable realizations within their adoptions.
With the needs and wishes of the adopted person at the forefront, Gladys Bulyaba and Jessica Davis work tirelessly to find biological and adoptive families’ the answers they are searching for and then to bridge the gap between the two families. They carry out this mission with the integrity and responsibility it deserves; ensuring to value their privacy, their voices and their desire for answers.
click here to read an op-ed by Jessica Davis regarding her personal experience with Intercountry adoption.