Pittsburgh Bhutanese
He’s tireless about helping refugee and immigrant families
Khara Timsina seems tireless in his efforts to help others, including fellow refugees from the Asian nation of Bhutan. He began volunteering in 2010 within the Bhutanese community in the southern part of Pittsburgh and its South Hills neighborhoods when a group formed committed to creating a new organization to aid the community. Soon, that population grew to the thousands.
That organization, the Bhutanese
Community Association of Pittsburgh, now serves hundreds of Bhutanese immigrants and refugees living throughout the region, free of charge. The group serves as a resource in many ways, offering classes for English-language literacy and for the U.S. citizenship test, assistance with voter registration, and support for families with school-age children. It has also been a go-to help during the uncertainty of the pandemic.
The struggle of ethnic Nepali people in Bhutan has been a decades-long crisis. With the government concerned that the growing Nepali minority in the agricultural south threatened the northern majority Drupka people, policies in 1958 and 1985 systematically disenfranchised Nepali residents and stripped them of citizenship. In the early 1990s, more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese were forced to leave lands lived on and farmed by their ancestors for generations and go to neighboring Nepal as refugees. Fifteen rounds of negotiations between the
two countries produced no solutions.
In 2007, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees began a resettlement program for Bhutanese refugees, the overwhelming majority of which came to the United States. After living in the camp for almost 17 years, Mr. Timsina was resettled in the Bronx, N.Y., with his wife and young son in 2009. Eventually, the rest of his siblings and relatives made it to the U.S.
He described the screening process as “daunting, lengthy [and] very tiresome.” The Department of Homeland Security screens for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, which takes considerable time. Finally, when a refugee is cleared to move, the person receives an interest-free loan for travel expenses to a new apartment abroad. His resettlement job was working at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
He explained that the rapid growth of Bhutanese refugees in the Pittsburgh area is due to them following relatives who have already resettled here or being attracted to industrial jobs requiring little knowledge of English and affordable housing relative to other major cities.
For Mr. Timsina, Pittsburgh’s rolling topography reminded him of his mountainous homeland, and he was moved to the area in December 2009, eventually working at BNY Mellon.
As BCAP grew and received its nonprofit status in 2014, he served as vice president. He briefly became president but stepped down to serve with a part-time project running U.S. citizenship classes in nine neighborhoods.
Then in fall 2016, the board asked him to serve as executive director, a role he has held since.
In January, BCAP received a $20,000 grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Small and Mighty initiative, which focuses on organizations with budgets of $600,000 or less that work to address poverty and inequity by meeting basic needs.
BCAP regularly provides family and youth programs, outreach to older adults, and Bhutanese cultural programs. But like so many other nonprofits, the organization had to adapt during the pandemic.
Last spring, requests for assistance with food, housing, health and safety needs, and education assistance increased from 80 calls per month to more than 300, according to a release from The Pittsburgh Foundation. The grant money will go toward sustaining existing programs while addressing everything from personal protective equipment to financial assistance.
“It is through such funding that we are able to run our office [and] have a physical location where community members can come anytime,” Mr. Timsina said, explaining that most of the time, folks don’t even have to make an appointment.
Despite the open-door policy, Mr. Timsina is the only
full-time staff member BCAP employs, as another staff member dropped to part time in February. Because of this, he has a mountain of responsibilities, meetings, calls and appointments every day. He also recently wrapped up his term as co-chair of the Immigrants and Internationals Advisory Council at the Allegheny County Department of HumanServices.
“I don’t get to feel what time it is until the notification on my smartphone tells me there is a meeting next second or in the next five or 10 seconds or minutes,” he said.
Even when the board encouraged him to close BCAP as cases of COVID-19 rose in November, he continued to help people over the phone until the group resumed inperson appointments in January.
BCAP worked with Squirrel Hill Health Center and the Allegheny County Health Department to bring a mobile testing unit to the area and coordinated with churches and municipalities to use their outdoor spaces for testing. Due to a lack of personal protective equipment and general safety concerns, many immigrants and refugees could not get rides to testing sites.
Registering for a test was another hurdle with which BCAP assisted. Now the group receives calls from families looking to register for COVID-19 vaccinations.
“We do more work than we are able to document,” Mr. Timsina said. “Any report that comes out is not a true reflection of what we have done. There is a lot of work [not recorded] because we simply don’t have time to
document everything.”
Volunteers from the community have also stepped in to help. Nahrhari Pokhrel has been volunteering since 2013, prior to BCAP having an office. He recalled there were fewer than 10 people actively involved in helping families. Now there are more volunteers and workers than he can think of who have pitched in.
“I know recently I was there taking calls for BCAP, and within the two days, I received more than two dozen phone calls and was able to help the families,” Mr. Pokhrel said. “That goes on to tell me that not only has the organization evolved and improvedover the years, but the outfit has also become a biggerpart of the community.”
Mr. Pokhrel received his master’s in teaching English as a second language from
Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has helped tutor adults in BCAP classes on the side.
“BCAP has become the voice for the families that do not speak English,” he said. “A lot of adult learners have taken classes through BCAP and have been able to successfully complete the citizenship test and be naturalized. As a volunteer, there is no greater incentive than a happy face that leaves the office at the end of the day.”
Mr. Timsina explained that BCAP is not interested in supporting just Bhutanese communities but also immigrant and refugee communities more broadly in Allegheny County. He mentioned that support also goes to Burmese families who have made their homes locally. He also pointed to local businesses such as Rivers Casino and Giant Eagle that have benefited from immigrant labor.
“Immigrants and refugees have made a positive difference in this part [of town],” Mr. Timsina said. “Anyone before 2010, 2011 or even 2012, driving along in the Brentwood-BaldwinWhitehall area would see most [commercial] structures open for rent. Now most of those are running.”
When he isn’t working with BCAP, he spends time with his family in Baldwin Borough and also runs an English interpretation company.
He expressed his gratitude for The Pittsburgh Foundation’s grant and said it would allow the organization to continue providing assistance to thosewho need it.
“BCAP is doing a lot of groundwork,” Mr. Timsina said. “We are here to provide any kind of support that we have the capacity to do.”