Delaware County retiree works to help Eritrean refugees

Wallingford's lush hills are a world apart from the arid Horn of Africa. But a trim stone Tudor in the Delaware County suburb is a humming hub of help for refugees from one of the world's most repressive regimes.

Since the birth of Eritrea as a nation in 1993, more than 200,000 of its people have fled the dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerki. Under his government, Human Rights Watch monitors say, "arbitrary arrests, torture, and forced labor are rampant."

Something had to be done to make this stop, John Stauffer resolved.

So, in 2010, he cofounded the America Team for Displaced Eritreans, an all-volunteer effort that he runs from a spare bedroom in his 75-year-old Wallingford home.

With a board of eight Eritrean immigrants and two Americans, and $35,000 in private donations annually, the group has provided cash assistance, clothing, household goods, and advocacy for hundreds of Eritreans in America. Since 1994, an estimated 12,575 Eriteans have moved to the United States, with from 50 to 60 currently in the Philadelphia area.

The group's network of supporters in seven mostly East Coast states supplies translators and expert testimony in asylum cases. Its website, www.EritreanRefugees.org, is a news clearinghouse.

Slightly larger than Pennsylvania, the country of nearly six million people is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, and the Red Sea. But Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia 46 years ago when Stauffer, freshly graduated from Juniata College, served there with the Peace Corps. He fell in love with the place.

In 1968, he returned to the United States to work at Rohm & Haas, marketing chemicals used to manufacture paint. He retired in 2006 and incorporated the nonprofit America Team four years later.

On a typical day, Stauffer, 68, posts news about Eritrea and works the phones, sharing information with aid groups and government agencies. He recently highlighted the 2012 Reporters Without Borders index ranking Eritrea dead last among 179 countries in press freedom. In December, he posted news about economic sanctions the United Nations imposed on Eritrea for allegedly arming Somalian warlords.

Among Stauffer's ongoing concerns is fallout from the Arab Spring - specifically, the plight of Eritreans fleeing to Israel via the Sinai, where Bedouin bandits have held them up.