Help Stefan Campaign Donations and Links Page

This is Stefan and her son, Zogo and I would like your help to come to their aid. I am desperately in love with this woman, a true survivor, and I have spent my last penny trying to aid them. But I have come to the end of what I can do and there is still more to be done. Hence this plea for your aid. I will tell you the entire tale below, but what I would like from you is $1, just $1.

What do you get for that: you will ensure that this site remains free to all and as a donor you will get your name on this page along with any URL you would like linked to. Just think of it, $1 helps Stefan and gets your URL on this region of the site in perpetuity. And remember that this page is becoming more and more popular by the day. If you want your website featured on a high-traffic page then why not donate now?

Aims of this campaign:

1. To allow Stefan's father to have a life-saving operation so that the surviving members of her family can be re-united
2. To allow Stefan to visit her father in Liberia and to make the journey there as safe for her as it can be.
3. To allow me to travel to Senegal to look after Stefan's son, Zogo whilst his mother is away.
4. To give Stefan the orthodontic work she needs to repair her upper jaw.
5. To give Stefan a wedding to remember in December so that we can live together in the UK as a family; thus ensuring the new future I promised her.
6. To set-up a fund so that the remaining Liberian refugees in Dakar can have an English-language school for their children to repace the UN school that has just closed.

Below is an open letter requesting your aid. Below that is a potted history of Stefan's life over the past seven years. This tells you what she has gone through during these years and tells you how much of a survivor she is. I love this woman and her son and I am going to improve their lives but I am out of funds to help them any more. I now need your help to make her dreams come true. To fix her troubles, to re-unite her with her family and to give them a new life in the UK. Please help me make all this come true. Your continued support will then go to helping all the other Liberian/Sierra Leonian refugees still in Senegal.

Today's Total: $197
A letter from the Webmaster: I would like to introduce to you Stefan and her son Zogo.
They are true survivors who escaped the civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone in the early 200s to make their way on foot through Guinea (where both developed malaria) to Senegal, The Gambia and now Dakar, Senegal. There they are refugees and have no legal status. As such they cannot earn any money and are eking-out a hand to mouth existence. Though that's not how they would put it. However, Stefan believed her entire family to have been massacred. But now, with my aid she has discovered her father to be alive but in very bad health with a heart condition. He needs $10 000 for hospital bills and for the operation that may save his life. Stefan herself has recently been very ill with malaria and has been hospitalized herself at a cost of $3000.

I love this woman very much, but with her hospitalization I have now spent my last penny so I'm turning to the internet in the hope of gaining donations to help Stefan's father Alfred. I am also looking for the airfare to send Stefan to her father's side. I would also be like to take several months off work so that I can travel to Senegal to look after the boy, Zogo. The total cost of all this will come to more than $20 000, so I'm imploring for your help.

The home page for the campaign is at http://www.celtnet.org.uk/info/help-stefan.php where you can make your donation securely via PayPal.

If you are interested in recipes then, if you donate $10 you will get a copy of my eBook 'Guide to Spices' at http://www.celtnet.org.uk/info/spice-book.php.
A $5 donation gets you a copy of my poetry eBook 'Memories of Myth and Man'.
If you are a webmaster then your $1 donation will get you a permanent link to your site on http://www.celtnet.org.uk/info/one-dollar-links.php

Please help me to re-build the life of a woman who has lost so much.

Thank you for your aid.

Yours
Dyfed Lloyd Evans

PS you can help this campaign by copying the email letter above and sending it to all your friends. Thank you for your help.

But first here's a brief tale for you. Stefan lives in Dakar, Senegal but originally comes from Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Stefan was brought-up in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa as a member of a large, extended Christiian family. Her life, though not exactly easy, was a happy one and she spent her childhood quite normaly (for the region at least). But everything changed in 1999 when she was living with her mother's family in Liberia, where she had gone to escape sporadic fighting in Sierra Leone during the late 1990s. She was caught-up in the civil war and fearing for her life her family sent her back to Sierra Leone. But she returned to Sierra Leone just as fighting broke out on the Liberian border in 1999. Somehow she managed to travel all the way across the country (and her descriptions of this are truly horrific and not for this part of the site). She made her way back to Freetown only to find the place in chaos with bodies littering the streets. Her family managed to shelter her until 2001 when they were scattered and most were killed. She was sheltered by a man who treated her very badly and got her pregnant. She escaped from him, but on her way out of Sierra Leone she was assaulted by a soldier, little more than a child who struck her full face with his rifle but. Believing her dead he left her bleeding on the ground, her upper jaw damaged and most of her front teeth missing. Despite this she managed to nurse herself back to health and escape with what little posessions she had.

Believing that her entire family was dead, massacred in the conflict, Stefan, now with child gathered what little money she had and managed to make it across the border into Guinea where her son was born. Doing odd jobs she managed to cross the country, but both she and her son (Zogo) them contracted malaria, which still plagues them both, as they sought to eke-out a living and from there. Indeed, Stafan is curently desperately ill with hepatic (liver) complications from her malaria. From there they made it to Guinea Bissau, itself recovering from civil war and then through Senegal to The Gambia where she managed to connect with a number of other Liberian refugees who were taking refuge with the Catholic Church. Conditions in The Gambia and the risk of sexual predation forced Stefan to flee again and she made her way to Dakar in Senegal in search of refuge, political stability and personal safety. However, as refugees they were unable to gain employment in Senegal and quite literally had to live a hand-to-mouth existence. There was some protection from the United Nations but it did not really help them much. They were in a foreign conuntry with a foreign language to them and essentially with no political status or recognition whatsoever. Basically they were stuck, unable to gain any money to get them out of the situation they were in. Yet they remained loyal to the Church and staunch Christians.

I met them quite by accident over the internet almost a year ago now. Shortly after Stefan became gravely ill with anaemia and I spent most of my savings on her hospital treatment. We fell in love and began what's turned out to be a long and ridiculously tortuous process of gaining her a visa for entry into the UK. This meant gaining passports for Stefan and her son, a process that turned out to be riciculously complex and which is still ongoing. Though the child's passport has come through Stefan's passport is being held-up and effectively is held for ransom until we can deliver more money to pay for it's release. Money that I simply don't have. Then there are on-going costs because of the malaria, support costs for Stefan and Zogo as they can't earn any money in Senegal.

Stefan has just recently learnt that some of her family have survived. But in another cruel twist of fate her father, Alfred Doris, is gravely ill in hospital in Freetown and has a serious heart conditon that will cost $10 000 to operate upon (if it's not too late). Your support through this site will help Stefan gain airfare to see her father one last time and will aid in the costs for his hospitalization and hopefully even his treatment. Any additional money will help with legal expenses and costs to get her her passport, it will help with treatment costs for her and her son's malaria. It will help us get married and it will help Stefan get the damage to her jaw and mouth properly and professionally attended to. Essentially you are helping give two wonderful people a life that they could never otherwise have dreamed of. After everything that's gone wrong for them isn't it about time that something went right? And if people here are extremely generous maybe I can even give Stefan, Zogo and Stefan's father a new life here in the UK where they can, finally, put all the pain and the damage done to them in the past behind them.

I obviously hope that you will find it in your hearts to help Stefan but even if you're here for other reasons then, if you make a donation and you own a website a link to that site will be placed on this page. If you donate $10 or more then you will get a copy of my 'Guide to Spices' eBook as a 'thank you' for your kindness. I promised Stefan that this year would be her year of recovery. She has lost everything, her family, a chance at an education and someone to support her. I promised her a wedding in December but the money for that has now gone on providing for her and her son and what little I can do for her father. Please help me to keep my promise to her; let this year truly be a year of recovery for her.

This may sound like a tale of woe but, in reality, it's a tale of survival against all odds. It's just that there's an opportunity here to give this woman some closure and to open-up a completely new life for her.

If you can find it in yourself to donate just $1 today to help this lady turn her life around and make a new life and future for herself then we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Even if you cannot afford $1 please send a link to this page to your friends or tell them about this campaign.

You may not be able to save everyone but you can help give two people a better life today.

Please believe me, that if there were any other way of doing this I would have done so. Please realize that Stefan has been supporting this site by providing African recipes that I hope many of you will enjoy and use. Isn't it time now that we helped support her? Help me help her father and help her by giving her the chance at a completely new life. After all she has been through she deserves something a little special this year, especially as she has just found and will shortly lose her father, possibly never seing him to say good bye. Her mother and brothers are already dead. It would be a truly cruel twist of fate if she heard that her father was alive only to lose him. I have given her everything I have and the only thing I have left now is this website.

Over the next few days I will add more information to this region of the site as well as giving you information on the countries Stefan travelled through, the problem of malaria in Africa and the political situations in West Africa. I will also add weekly bulletins so you can see how our lives progress (or don't).

Every penny I earn from this website goes to giving Stefan a new life, into helping her find any surviving members of her family and to overcome her latest bout of malaria and to try and provide for us a wedding in December and then to collect sufficient money that I can bring her and her son to Britain. Even if you don't want to donate you can still help. Why not use one of the Amazon links on the site to buy your next book (the cost to you will be the sam but I will get a commission). The same is true of my

eBay Misspelling Tool

. Small actions from you can make a huge difference to the life of someone who has suffered so much already.

As a 'thank you' for those who have helped so far (and your help in all respects is much appreciated) I've placed all my wife's authentic West African recipes in one place and you can acces them all at the: Stefan's West African Recipes page.

Supporters of this Campaign:

Personal Supporters

Laura Williams
Jane Drake Hale

Website Supporters

Please note, if you have a website and would like to support this campaign then a $1 donation gets you permanent placement on the alphabetical links pages. A $5 donation or more gets you featured on this home page.

This is the page for the aid Stefan campaign. Here you can sponsor Stefan to give her a better life and a fresh start. This page gives you the opportunity to links for $1. Yes, buy permanent sponsorship links on this page for one dollar. If you want your one dollar links here then you know what to do: just click on the paypal donation button above and give your site's URL and a five-word description in the PayPal 'information' text box when you pay. Alternatively you can email me your information on the one dollar links main page.