Foundation

Grace Yufela Charitable Foundation is a Minnesota based non-profit organization 501©3, founded by Florence Njoyi who was born and raised in Cameroon, and has experienced mental health challenges within the family circles.

Grace Yufela Caged For Decades

Grace Yufela is the fourth child in a loving family of seven. She grew up during the era in Cameroon, Africa where the girl child had no opportunity to go to school, but was forced into early marriage. Grace’s parents broke the taboo of not sending girl children to school and sent Grace to school. Grace went to St Joseph Girl’s Primary School, Bamenda; St Augustine’s College, Nso and went for further Studies to Britain where she studied Secretariat Duties.

Grace returned to Cameroon from Britain in 1983 and had a job with the Cameroon Airlines as the Secretary. Grace worked with the Cameroon Airlines in Douala, Cameroon for three years and on one Sunny day in October 1986; Grace went to her Uncle in another part of Douala and asked him to take her to Bamenda, Cameroon that she was feeling sick.

That was beginning of an illness that was not understood by the family members and the community. The family at this point thought it was cerebral Malaria and the community thought it was witchcraft that has being bestowed on her by the evil spirits. The family’s thoughts and hopes were shuttled as Grace never recovered from her symptoms. Nobody in the family or the community knew or understood what had happened to her or her struggles and challenges. Grace lived in this situation of ignorant without interventions for twenty five (25) years until December 2010 when her little sister took her for some kind of psychiatric evaluation. That was the ice breaker of the disease Grace has struggled for two decades.

During these two decades, Grace was put in a cage like a fugitive by the family members and the community. Grace’s life was surrounded by the following:

• Witchcraft,
• Outcast from society,
• Chained,
• No treatment,
• Fed from garbage,
• Neglected by family & friends,
• Abandoned,
• Poverty,
• Ignored by family,
• Stigmatized by society,
• Rendered homeless,
• Lack of resources.