The Project
About 110,000 Nepali-speaking refugees from Bhutan have been living in refugee camps in southeastern Nepal for 16-17 years. The United States has agreed to resettle up to 60,000 of these refugees. The first refugee families began to arrive in the US in early 2008. Australia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark have also agreed to accept tens of thousands of additional refugees.
For the most part the arriving refugees know very little English. Their native language is Nepali. As refugee resettlement agencies find housing and employment for the adults and as the children are enrolled in schools, there has been a need for a single dictionary with both Nepali-English and English-Nepali sections. No such dictionary was printed in the U.S. until this project.
This project was created to meet this obvious need. We have arranged for the publication and distribution of such a dictionary. The book, "A Concise English-Nepali Nepali-English Dictionary" has now been printed in the U.S. and sells for $16.00.
We are seeking donations to underwrite the printing and shipping costs to get one book for each Nepali-speaking refugee family and other books for the social service agencies, schools, and health facilities that will be working with these refugees all around the U.S.
We will sell copies of this dictionary to anyone who would like to purchase a copy. We hope, however, that those who place such orders also donate at least an additional $16.00 to allow us to provide a book for free to a refugee family.