World Relief Nepali refugee staff contacts friends

Pingala Dhital works for World Relief as an Employment Specialist

Since the recent earthquake in Nepal, Pingala Dhital, one of 350 Nepali-Bhutanese refugees who settled in Spokane since 2008, has been texting friends with the non-governmental women’s organization she worked with in Kathmandu.

“All are alive and none are hurt, but their homes are destroyed,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to see a monument I had climbed destroyed.  Many friends are sleeping outside on the street.”

Pingala and her family were some of the first refugees of Nepali descent who escaped Bhutan and lived in refugee camps in Nepal for 20 years until the U.S. Refugee Resettlement program started admitting them to the United States.

Ostracized and persecuted in Bhutan for being of Nepali descent, she left in 1990 when she was 17.  As persecution increased, Nepali left Bhutan. 

Pingala lived nine months in India and in 1991 went to a refugee camp in eastern Nepal, where she studied, married Kamal and raised two children.

“My ancestors are from Nepal, but we did not have the right to work or have legal status in Nepal,” she said.

She and her family lived three years in Kathmandu, where she advocated for Nepali refugees and her husband worked with Bhutanese human rights organizers.

They arrived in Spokane in February 2008 and in June she began working with World Relief as employment specialist, helping refugees apply for and find jobs. 

World Relief, said Spokane director Mark Kadel, has its international disaster relief in place, responding with earthquake relief.

For information, call 484-9829 or visit https://worldrelief.org/nepal-earthquake.

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