medical assistance

Ray of Hope Medical Missions was created in 2012 as an emergency solution to bring then 3-year-old Franny back to the US for crucial, life-saving medical care.

When we began the medical assistance program, we didn’t know if it would be just to save Franny, or if it would grow into something more some day.

The medical assistance program identifies children throughout the world in need of life-saving medical care due to physical abnormalities such as cleft lip/palette, burns, or other impairments.

Ray of Hope garners donated medical services in the United States, arranges all travel documentation (national ID, passport, U.S. visa), and provides an escort to bring just the child to the U.S. The child is placed with an American host family who cares for the child before, during, and after medical treatment. Once released by medical authority, an escort returns the child to their family and culture.

We have assisted in over 67 children getting the crucial care they needed.

Many families hosted multiple different children throughout the years. An act that not only provided these children with the medical care they desperately needed, but the families also experienced life-changing growth through caring for the children.

When Covid hit in 2020, it completely shut down international travel and overwhelmed the worldwide medical system. As a result, the ability continue medical assistance operations was put on pause.

Now that the initial impacts of Covid have passed, we have begun to dream about the medical assistance program again. This time, we are focused on connecting children in need with in-country medical assistance.

It’s our hope to show that America is not a magical place where people go and are healed. We want to show others that they are capable of healing their own, caring for their own, and being a community who takes care of each other. Our purpose there is merely to show them what that actually looks like.

We want to show families, locally and globally, that just because a baby is born with deformities or defects, they don’t deserve to be abandoned. Our hope is to show Uganda and the world that children (and their families) with outward medical differences can live a happy, healthy life.

It is our heart to show Uganda and the world that we can and must care for children, even the ones who look different.