Dear Friends:
Daystar University is a lighthouse. It is not the most well known landmark in Africa. (Most who travel to Africa make the trip to see animals, not people.) Yet, it serves the same function as a navigational lighthouse - namely, to illuminate the way, to serve as a fixed compass point of direction, and a comfort to travel weary sojourners.
Lighthouses also need maintenance! Please be sure to review the human and material needs found later in this letter. We have an urgent need for scholarship assistance to come alongside of over 200 students whose families have been hardest hit by the world economic downturn. In order to keep them in attendance, would you consider an extra gift to our scholarship fund?
Illuminate the Way
This academic year, 1,800 students call Daystar University's two campuses their home away from home. Most have settled there for four years to complete their undergraduate education. Others are pastors coming to refresh their skills as church leaders. Still others are working on Masters degrees.
For the past twenty-five years, Daystar has been the place in Africa for students who call themselves Christians to receive a world-class, pre-professional education. It meshes faith with learning in such a way that students choose an active path of service to others once they graduate.
All told, over 8,000 Daystar graduates are now serving God in 37 of Africa's 55 nations. From this small beginning a quarter century ago, savvy Christian leaders are using their education to lead schools, organizations, governments, and businesses.
A Fixed Compass Point of Direction
At its inception, Daystar could have chosen an easier path. It could have decided to have an easier entrance standard. It could have accepted any belief as truth. It could have selected faculty who didn't care about faith. But it didn't!! Instead, Daystar has remained true to its original mission - to educate young women and men of faith and to prepare them to lead organizations with wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity. These young leaders take their mature Christian faith with them into a society dominated by animism, Islam, and atheism.
One beautiful testament to the inter-nationality of God's truth is that the same education from Daystar is used by Kenyans, Ugandans, Somalis, Tanzanians, and three dozen other countries to offer ethical standards of behavior to those used to living in corruption.
Moreover, these students from so many tribes and countries learn to get along as fellow students on campus. They work together on classroom projects, on service projects, on sports teams, and on worship teams. They are figuring out how to wage peace, not war.
Campus pastors, student development staff members, and caring faculty all contribute to molding and shaping students who love God first, and their fellow human beings second. They exercise their freedom of expression in ways that matter: caring for students in crises, doing each other's laundry, praying together for what only God can provide.
A Comfort to Travel Weary Sojourners
As you read this letter this autumn, several Daystar students are running for elected office to offer themselves as candidates who will lead their country without becoming corrupt by the power and authority given to them. Others are arranging for food and literature to be taken to Sudan caught in a religious civil war. Daystar grads are taking what they have learned and translating it into action - not only to please their Creator, but also to serve their fellow human travelers on this planet.
Kenyan citizens and Daystar students alike are regularly stopped in the city and on the roads by police to extract bribes. The police are just as poor as everyone else, but they wear a uniform and can use it to pad their own pockets. There is poverty in Africa that we Americans cannot even imagine. The typical Kenyan wage earner makes $380 per year. Living conditions in the countryside are subsistence level at best, so many agricultural workers give up and move to the city. Nairobi now has three million residents. Two million of them live in slums without indoor plumbing or electricity.
Daystar is a part of the long-term solution to this cycle of poverty. Education majors provide literacy and education to maximize opportunity. Business majors create jobs. Social work majors find those falling through the cracks. Media communication majors tell the truth about needs, corruption, and opportunity. Bible majors offer spiritual hope and Biblical counseling.
Hope for Africa
Many of my friends ask:
"How did Africa ever get so far behind?"
"Why are so many of the poorest nations in the world located on the same continent?"
Africa's history is long and troubled. One could blame several factors - imperialism, corruption, tribalism, and war. I have read books and articles citing these and many other reasons. The problem is that they all bemoan the past. What Africa needs now is hope for the future!
Daystar University offers hope. Earlier this year, I saw 476 students walk across the stage to receive degrees. Almost all were the first person in their family or village to receive a university diploma. Moreover, they stayed in Africa (more than half who come west for their education never return home) and received an education that costs less than a quarter of a comparable education here in the United States.
Will You Help?
Daystar receives no government funding, no permanent endowment, and no denominational underwriting. We exist because our great God continues to bless us through you. Will you partner with us in this crucial international ministry?
Thanks!
Dennis Morrow
Executive Director
