For two Flagler seniors, helping Bhutanese refugees is not just a project, it’s also a passion
They are a people without a country — more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees who were trapped between a nation that disowned them and another that wouldn’t take them.
For two decades they languished in United Nations refugee camps with nothing but bamboo huts covered by plastic tarps and meager rations, toiletries and other essentials. Then in 2007, the United States and other countries agreed to end their plight and take in the refugees. More than 22,000 have already immigrated, settling in cities across the country like Jacksonville, Fla.
And that is where two Flagler College roommates come in. For Sheila Acharya, it was a calling to help people from her homeland after her parents began doing whatever they could to help the refugees in Jacksonville. For Jessica Welch, president of Flagler’s Students in Free Enterprise team, it was a chance to develop a unique project around helping people.
They called the project “Suruwat” — Nepali for “creating new beginnings.”
“The first time you meet [the refugee families], you can’t help but want to help them,” Welch said. “It’s instantaneous.”
Welch says this venture isn’t a typical SIFE project.
“It’s the biggest challenge we’ve faced as a team because it’s not just teaching people how to run a business,” she said. “It’s teaching them everything. I mean, we taught them how to go grocery shopping. We taught them how to clean their house, which are not things that meet SIFE criteria. But until we do, we can’t teach them how to get a job.”
SIFE is a nonprofit organization active on more than 1,500 college campuses in more than 40 countries. Student teams develop projects to help create economic opportunity by teaching concepts related to free-market economics, business ethics, entrepreneurship, personal finance and success skills. While the Suruwat project might seem outside of that scope, Welch and Acharya say it connects to core principles of the organization, which are so deeply rooted in capitalism. Welch notes SIFE’s motto is a “head for business, a heart for the world.”
This is a heartstrings project, she says, and for her and Acharya, it has also become a passion.
The Life of a Refugee
The plight of the Bhutanese refugees is little known around the world — lost among much bigger and better-known ethnic cleansings and refugee crises, like Darfur and Sudan.
The U.S. agreed in 2007 to accept most of the Bhutanese refugees — about 60,000 in all — who were living in seven refugee camps on the eastern edge of Nepal. Bhutanese by birth, but ethnically Nepali, the refugees were victims of an ethnic cleansing when Bhutan expelled them and revoked their citizenship in the 1990s. Exiled, they crossed the border to Nepal, which also refused to take them.
“They fled to Nepal, but Nepal is a very poor country,” Welch said. “They didn’t have the infrastructure or the desire to support them.”
According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there are still more than 86,000 refugees in the Nepal camps, all of whom are expected to eventually be moved to new host countries where they will try to make a home.
Jacksonville is slated to receive 6,000 refugees, and about 300 are already living there. One of three charities helps setup the refugees, the oldest of which is a deaf and blind woman in her 80s and the youngest, infants. But the money they’re given doesn’t go far, and their housing is often substandard and in some of the city’s rougher neighborhoods. Many do not speak English, especially the older refugees, and the younger struggle to find jobs, especially in this down economy.
With not much more than the clothes on their backs, they come to the United States to start new lives from scratch.
“Sheila and I were lucky enough to be invited to go and pick up two families when they came in,” Welch said. “A family of four walked off the plane clutching these plastic bags that had all of their documentation and a duffel, which was an overnight bag by our standards. And that’s all the possessions that this family of four owned.
“It’s incredible,” she continued. “For Sheila and me, it’s not uncommon when we’re driving back, especially after that, to sit in the car and cry for hours because there’s just so much you want to do, but you don’t know how.”
Starting Over
In its first year working with the refugees, SIFE completed projects that helped the Bhutanese better understand how to succeed in the United States, like field trips to banks where they learned basic banking.
“There’s a fear of bank accounts because the money is no longer in your hands,” Welch said. “And so we have to explain the benefits and how it actually keeps their money safer.”
They took the refugees to grocery stores to teach them about the fundamentals of shopping, led workshops on English, and taught them other basics that most people take for granted.
The American culture is an alien world to the Bhutanese, and one that is very intimidating and overwhelming. And while Welch and Acharya find it an incredibly rewarding project, they also say it’s never easy.
“The hardest thing is you can’t do enough,” Welch said. “You have all these wonderful ideas, but it’s just a matter of implementing them and getting community support. You just don’t want to let them down, but it pushes you.”
The students experienced how tragic the situation can be in July when one of the refugees — 21-year-old Hari Adhikari — was shot and killed during a robbery. He’s someone both Welch and Acharya knew personally from working with the families.
“He was 21,” Welch said, her eyes growing heavy. “He was our age. He was the only one in his family who spoke English. The man who shot him got food stamps … that’s it. [Adhikari’s] family not only lost a member of their family, but also their sole financial support.”
Acharya said most people don’t understand much about the refugees — what they’ve been through in Nepal’s decrepit camps, how difficult it is to leave their homeland for a new country, and the challenges they face as they try to succeed here, especially in a slow economy.
“There are so many things that we see them struggling with,” she said.
Yet, for all the struggles and hurdles they face in their adopted country, Welch and Acharya say they see something much more positive: a chance for them to live out the American dream. Acharya said her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Nepal, are prime examples of how that really can happen.
“When [the refugees] were living in Nepal, they had no opportunities at all,” Acharya said. “They were living in the camp, and they were educated, but they couldn’t do anything with it. And then they’re here now and they have these obstacles, but they always say the sky’s the limit. It’s hard for them at first, but my parents went through the same struggles, and I definitely think they can do well.”
Moving Forward
This year the SIFE team is planning on helping the refugees create videos for newcomers as orientations to this new country. That way the Bhutanese will learn from their own people in their own language tips on acclimating, as well as some of the ins and outs of coming to the United States.
They also are planning to help the families in Jacksonville create a business — something of a cottage industry they can do at home — that will allow families to supplement income by selling their native wares: jewelry, art, clothing, tailoring.
“These individuals have incredible skills, but the job set in Nepal is very different than here,” Acharya said. “So it’s tweaking them a little bit so we can then create a business that we can sell their products.”
Acharya says she is excited about the opportunity because the refugees have so many skills and such a rich, vibrant culture.
“A lot of the adults can’t work because they don’t speak English and they just stay at home,” she said. “But many of them have skills like making jewelry, painting and different arts and crafts like that.”
For Acharya, who will graduate with Welch in the spring, it will be tough to let go of the project after it has become such an important part of her life.
“To see how strong they are after what they’ve been through and how optimistic they remain, it’s completely, I don’t want to say changed me, but I realize a deeper understanding of what people struggle with right here,” she said. “To see them improving every week … it’s really cool to see how much they’ve overcome.”
