After giving my life to Jesus in 2007, I had a dream that I was flying over the ocean and landed in Africa where there was a small boy all alone with a protruding belly. I instantly knew that I was called to abandoned and orphaned children in Africa.

As a new Christian I began to learn and grow in my faith. I learned how to serve in church in children’s ministry and then, later, in church office administration. I began to volunteer with other African missions serving in Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan as I felt I had a calling to work in Africa and I desperately wanted to follow that call. 

In 2016, I was asked to help design a website for to a small organisation in Kampala working directly with street connected children that was starting out. Instantly, I knew I had found the the children God was calling me to. In 2017, I was finally able to travel to Africa for the first time and serve with African Action. I loved every second of it and felt the strong call to Uganda over my life. I had so much fun learning how to raise funds for the small organisation I was helping and watched them expand and run their feeding program each week.

In 2019, the leader of that small organisation decided he didn’t want to be in Uganda anymore and closed down his CBO. I was devastated as suddenly there was no project for me to support but I still had a deep love for the kids and the work. I felt like there was now a big void in my life. Then, covid hit. Messages came from Uganda with desperate cries for help! People were starving in their homes. I managed to quickly pull together a small team of local friends and we began a massive food outreach in the local slum communities near Kampala and food outreaches for children living on the streets. We hired a truck and transported in hundreds of bags of posho throughout the community regularly to help them to survive the weeks in lockdown. It dawned on me that I had been given the skills and abilities needed to establish my own organisation and so that is what I did. I began the paperwork, pulled a small team together and registered my own charity in Australia and NGO in Uganda. On the 5th of June 2020, Umoya Ministries was born. 

Since then, Umoya Ministries has continued to grow and develop as we have provided regular outreach, food packages, rescued children, and provided access to medical care and education through our child sponsorship program. Our goal is to continue to grow and rescue more children from a life on the street and to build a child resettlement home in Uganda for children who have nowhere else to go.

- Lauren Lamont, founder of Umoya Ministries