Aurora New Dawn Foundation began in September 2018. It started as Aurora Bible Centre, a training institution affiliated to Christian Leadership University in New York and operating in Kenya. The line the centre still uses is “Shaped to sharpen.”
From that September, Aurora partnered with like-minded organisations to work in Mukuru, Nairobi. The purpose was to equip pastors who live and serve there with academic knowledge and the skill to preach the gospel in a hard place. Mukuru holds more than 500,000 people, many of them in stone or iron-sheet houses along the old railway and beside the factories. The roads have opened the settlement, and more families arrive from the countryside every year. Drainage is poor. Work is scarce. Crime, drugs, trafficking, and early pregnancy fall hardest on the people with the least protection. The pastors who stay need training that matches the minds in front of them.
Training has been held in church halls in Mukuru, including monthly and fortnightly classes. In February and March, before meetings had to stop for a time because of the coronavirus, more than 50 pastors were trained in Reuben. The courses offered are certificates, diplomas, and bachelor’s degrees in counselling, leadership, hygiene, outreach, financial literacy, languages, business management, and ICT, among others.
On 12 April 2021 the team took sanitary towels to an initial 100 girls in Mukuru. On Saturday 11 September 2021, girls gathered again for a lesson called “Facing challenges in my environment,” the first part of a series named Womanhood. The lesson counted a cost many boys never hear: 35 years, 15 times a year, 50 shillings, more than 21,000 shillings, just to stay dignified. The answer that afternoon was attitude. You can be born and raised in the slums and still refuse to be finished by that address.
The doors are open Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 6pm, and Saturday, 9am to 2pm. Sunday is closed. Discover, train, empower, transform.