Mahima empowers refugee women

By Mary Stamp

Pingala Dhital, who fled from Bhutan and lived in a refugee camp in Nepal from 1991 to 2008, resettled in Spokane and worked with World Relief for 14 years.

In 2021, Innovia offered $250,000 for her to start a program for refugee women. Those funds followed the project as she moved from World Relief to Refugee and Immigrant Connections of Spokane in 2022 and then came on staff at Thrive International—where former World Relief director Mark Finney became director.

Pingala met with others to explore what refugee women needed. There were already English language and social service programs, so they looked for what would be unique.

In 2019 and 2020, while they were considering what to do, two refugee women were victims of honor killings. Pingala worked with one. Her burial was traumatizing, so she didn't go to the second burial.

"My eyes were opened to disturbing things happening for women," she said.

"I did not know what we had missed. One told her doctor, coworkers and a friend, but no one believed her husband would kill her. The second was divorced, but her ex-husband still wanted to control her.

"We wanted to honor them in a way that would be healing and keep their memory in a healthy way," Pingala said, knowing women find healing through making connections as they socialize.

"We chose to name the program the Mahima Project. 'Mahima' is a feminine word that means grace and transformation," Pingala said. "I see power in women if they are given opportunities. If women serve their families well, the next generations will be healthier and happier.

"Women need opportunities, but there are cultural barriers," she continued. "Many with children feel obligated to stay home, and there are language barriers. We wanted to give an opportunity to validate, empower and equip women."

In 2021, she and others in the refugee community gathered women to do beading and make jewelry to sell to earn some income.

With the Jubilee Market returning, they have an outlet to sell what they have made and to take orders. Next year they will have cards telling stories of the women who made the items. Each woman brings a story of grace through courage, strength and dignity, she said.

"We had few ways to market what we made," Pingala said. "It's an incentive if women are paid beyond Mahima funding."

Mahima provides equipment and supplies. As women gain skills, a local jewelry company, hires some of them.

Roya Ahmadi, 19, an Afghan woman who lived in Indonesia 10 years and came to Spokane six months ago, interprets for the beading class. Mahima may hire her to work while she goes to school.

Mahima also offers sewing classes. The first group of eight completed a six-week class and received new sewing machines. The next class will be eight weeks. The goal is to train 21 this year before snow makes driving hard.

Students make cloth bags, aprons, pillows and yoga mat covers to sell at Jubilee. The women will also make services like altering clothes available.

Mahima is partnering with Spokane Zero Waste that also hires some graduates.

"Some women have experienced abuse, so our setting keeps them in their comfort zone," Pingala said.

Nafisa Zafari, a woman who evacuated from Afghanistan, leads the sewing project.

"I met her at Tea and Coffee Time with Feast World Kitchen. Another woman bakes baklava and makes Turkish coffee," Pingala said.

Mahima also meets one-on-one with women and connects some with Lutheran Community Services Northwest for counseling.

Elizabeth Shchukina, a Ukrainian refugee, painted sunflowers, sky and other flowers around a room where women gather at Thrive to make it a joyful space, Pingala added.

Over the door is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

That expresses the Mahima Project's mission to validate, empower and equip refugee women to thrive.

"We want women to know they have a place to come if they are in need," Pingala said. "We have an emergency fund and guide women to resources. Our dream one day is to have a safe house with cultural sensitivity for refugee women."

"Women need empathy," she recognizes. "Empathy is not something that can be taught, It comes from our life experiences."

She shared how her empathy grew from her struggles.

Pingala values the many faiths ingrained in who she is from growing up in a Hindu family, going to a Buddhist school, being taught by Christian teachers, having Muslim friends and coming to America for freedom.

Although of Nepali heritage, she was born in a village in southern Bhutan. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, with support from Parliament, the government implemented a one nation one people policy to amalgamate cultures and conducted a survey to balance the country's demographics. The Bhutan People's Party was formed to challenge the government. It coerced people to participate in demonstrations against the government. It terrorized people, beheading two government officials and hanging them in public to show the consequences of not following the party.

Pingala, then 16, participated in a peaceful demonstration in 1990, and then was called and coerced by the political party.

"People were not aware they had power to oppose the law," said Pingala, empowered by joining demonstrations.

With her family's safety threatened, her father left. Her family slept in the jungle to hide from the army and the party who were raping girls. When her great uncle was kidnapped, her grandfather rescued him. Pingala heard of kidnappings, torture and killing.

Bhutan is a small kingdom. Those who came before 1958 could be citizens with free medical care and education. Those coming later were not citizens.

"Bhutan is a preliterate society, so few stored documents, but my grandfather stored his," she said.

With discrimination, injustices and violence, more than 100,000 of 600,000 Bhutanese fled Bhutan. The UN High Commission on Refugees asked Nepal to open refugee camps.

"We thought we might go home," Pingala said, "but 15 years of bilateral talks ended in deadlock."

With limited freedom and poor education, Pingala, her husband, whom she married in the camp, and their two children decided to leave. UN solutions to the refugee crisis are 1) go home, but that was impossible, 2) be integrated in the local society, which was also impossible or 3) resettle in a third country, the only option, she said.

"We wanted to raise our children in a normal community. Refugee leaders left with their families, seeking asylum in the U.S or Germany," she added.

In a 2007 BBC interview, Pingala spoke about going to a third country. A Bhutanese leader gave an ultimatum to her husband to either lose his job or let her be physically punished by his Maoist group. He left the job.

A few months later, when she went to the camp to get a visa to go to Chiang Mai for a women's conference, her hut was vandalized.

When she called her father, he did not know where her mother and siblings were. A sister-in-law was four months pregnant. A brother had a nine-day old baby, a toddler, a five- and a nine-year-old. Her family was displaced and she could never return to the camp.

Then Pingala and her friends helped gather 75,000 signatures to take to the U.S. embassy requesting the U.S. not to withdraw its offer to resettle 60,000 Bhutanese. She learned from the U.S. Embassy that the Bhutanese leaders were asking the U.S. government to withdraw its resettlement offer. Seven countries agreed to take refugees.

"Women were not to speak up," she said, explaining how women are considered disposable.

In February 2008, the U.S. embassy brought her whole family to a hotel in Kathmandu and told them to keep a low profile. Her parents came in August.

"We then came to Spokane," said Pingala, noting that now 80,000 Bhutanese refugees live in the U.S.

Although her parents and siblings first came to Spokane, most moved to Harrisburg, Pa., or other communities like Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, with big Bhutanese communities. About 400 Bhutanese live in Spokane.

Pingala said her roots are now in Washington state, with her son working as a civil engineer in Seattle and her daughter studying in Seattle.

It's still painful being separated from grandparents, relatives and friends she and her husband left in Bhutan. As soon as they became U.S. citizens in 2013, they went to India to visit with relatives at the border.

She knows other refugees share that experience.

For information, email pingala@thriveinternational.org or visit thriveint.org/mahima-project.