Egypt (MNN) – Tara Britton, International Director of Ayla Project International (API), has a call to walk beside people as the Great Physician does. In December 2023, she founded API as a response to the crisis in the Middle East. The organization, comprised of an international Christian team, helps critically ill refugee children and their families relocate and gain access to medical care.
For many families, interacting with API means encountering Christ’s love in action for the first time.
“We’re there with them in the darkest hours of their lives. We’re supporting them. We are their friends. We are praying with them. We are praying for them,” Britton says.
API was catalyzed when Britton first learned about “Lulu,” a young Palestinian girl with a serious heart condition. War zones are no respecter of failing oxygen levels; and by the time Britton discovered Lulu needed help, the child’s oxygen uptake was increasingly compromised. A friend who knew the situation informed Britton that if action was not taken to evacuate Lulu soon, the little girl would not survive.
“My friend said, ‘Can you help Lulu?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, but I can try,’” Britton recounts.
After knocking on several organizational doors, Britton and her colleagues found none actively evacuating people from the conflict zone at the time. The open door eventually came as a connection with foreign ministers in the region, one of whom reviewed Lulu’s medical papers and escalated her case.
Eventually, Lulu’s family, at that time displaced to South Palestine, received a summons to the border, where they eventually found themselves on a bus headed for Egypt. Britton and the team eagerly awaited evacuation confirmation from the family.
Three-year-old Lulu, courtesy of the Ayla Project.
“Finally, we received a phone call, and it was the mother who had borrowed the phone from the paramedic of the emergency vehicle that met them on the Egyptian side of the border. They were being medevac’d to Ismailia hospital in Sinai,” she says.
Receiving initial care was only the first step, as Lulu’s heart complications required specialized surgery beyond what local hospitals could provide. What’s more, her family was now uprooted: safe, but not sound. And Lulu’s family wasn’t alone. Once others learned of her evacuation, the API waiting list began to grow.
“We realized we couldn’t let these families struggle once we evacuated them. We had to start an organization to support them,” Britton says.
API takes a four-fold approach to assistance:
- Medical: arranging treatment and intervening medically when needed
- Psycho-social: offering trauma-informed care and counseling
- Educational: helping fund school-related needs
- Business: helping families launch small income generating business
Beyond its current work in the Middle East, Britton says API plans to expand to serve critically-ill children in conflict zones around the world.
As for Lulu, she and her family are now residing in Italy, where she is receiving treatment at a Vatican-affiliated hospital. Please pray for her upcoming open-heart surgery in February.
Please pray also for API’s team and their growing network of partnerships. Pray that God would continue to call and equip people for and bring resources to support this task, and ask the Lord to heal mightily through this work. To support this work through Ayla’s fiscal sponsor Horizons, please click here.
Featured photo: courtesy of Horizons International
