Check Out Ursula Kemp’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ursula Kemp. 

Hi Ursula, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today. 
In 2014 I was invited to join a nonprofit called Catalyst for Columbus. The vision was to see the city of Columbus flourish and thrive through engaging with churches and faith leaders all across central Ohio. Efforts were made to encourage collaboration and mobilize these faith-based organizations to reach outside their four walls and love and serve the people of Columbus. After much prayer and relationship building, we launched an initiative in 2016 called For Columbus Kids. The vision was to see every school adopted by a church or nonprofit in our network to help serve the needs of the students and staff. Adoptions included a host of projects such as clean-up days, teacher appreciation days, backpack drives, tutoring, mentoring, and more. We started at just 25% adoptions and soared to over 75% adoptions in just two years. With such a dense network of organizations and volunteers serving in schools, we also witnessed a miraculous mobilization of the faith community during COVID. Columbus Public Schools asked local churches and organizations to open their doors to provide safe learning spaces for their students during the pandemic. These spaces were called “Learning Extension Centers” or LECs, and they provided a way for the faith community to serve students with free internet access, tablets, meals, and tutoring during the day while classrooms were closed. Over 94 LECs were mobilized serving over 30,000 meals and harnessing over 15,000 volunteer hours (this was with data from only 2/3 of the LECs). Also, over 300,000 was raised from the faith community to help provide special programs for public school students and continue their education over the summer. Now with the pandemic dying down, For Columbus Kids remains strong in their goal to adopt every school in central Ohio. Community engagement is paramount to our success, and even the Columbus Dispatch (our local newspaper) featured our story to help share a positive out of the COVID years. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Whenever you have a dream that is bigger than what you can conceivably do on your own, you’re going to have naysayers and critics. The dream of For Columbus Kids is as big as the city and encompasses organizations and relationships over which we have little control. The old paradigm of having a specific “program” that just gets replicated over and over again is honestly outdated. We had to stretch our minds and shape a new paradigm of less control over each organization and provide for contextualization and specific application to each neighborhood. While this came with critics and naysayers, I can honestly say we are better because of it. Being stretched is part of the process!! 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Being faith-based may seem polarizing, but in all honesty, so many are hungering for meaning and purpose to life. One of my great burdens is seeing unity across denominations – even across the divide of protestant and catholic. I have remained laser-focused on a key strategy for bridging these divides. This strategy is corporate prayer. As people from many different backgrounds, ethnicities and walks of life are invited into a time of citywide prayer, priorities shift, relationships are forged, and hearts become soft. As we speak to one another our deepest burdens for our communities in the presence of God, we realize that we all share the same heart. We long to see communities and families flourish and thrive; we long to see crime rates go down and those who are oppressed lifted up. This is God’s desire as well. When we pray, we get transported from the realm of the “impossible” to the realm of “all things are possible!” The truth is we need God’s help for true transformation to take place, and this is my passion: to continue mobilizing prayer and changing hearts to see true renewal of our city and beyond. 

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Columbus is known for being a welcoming, hospitable place. We have beautiful diversity and vibrant communities. What I like the least, however, is our divisions and polarizations. We are one of the most economically segregated cities in the U.S., and we have much work to do to ensure all of us have a seat at the table. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.forcolumbus.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/for.columbus/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forcolumbus
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/for-columbus/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@forcolumbus
• Other: https://linktr.ee/forcolumbus