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

Lauren began to serve in her church doing office administration and volunteered with African missions working in Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan for 10 years. She sponsored a woman in Uganda who started her own small business, did website design and financial book keeping for African projects.

In 2016, Lauren volunteered with a local NGO running a feeding program with street connected children in Kisenyi. She built up her fundrasing skills and in 2017 travelled to Kenya and Uganda for the first time where she fell in love with Uganda!

In 2019, the leader of that small CBO decided he didn’t want run his organisation anymore and closed down his CBO. Soon after covid hit the world and messages came from Uganda with desperate cries for help! People were starving in their homes. Lauren managed to hire a truck with the help of some local friends and distributed hundreds of bags of posho throughout the community. Lauren then took to forming her own organisation and Umoya Ministries was born in 2020.

Since then, Umoya has continued to grow and be successful. Umoya is a registered charity in Australia and is currently in the process of setting up as an official NGO in Uganda (almost complete). The vision is to is establish a child resettlement home to ensure that every child living on the street has a safe place to call home.