Bhuwan shares a heartbreaking story of rejection and refugee for no good reason, followed by the heartwarming story of a community's resilience ultimately leading to opportunity in a new home half way across the world.



Bhuwan Pyakurel, a former refugee from Bhutan, resettled in the United States in 2009. He and his family moved to Ohio in 2014 and he became a U.S. citizen in 2015.  They bought their first home in Reynoldsburg and immediately became involved in the community.  In November 2019 he made history by becoming the first Bhutanese American to be elected to public office in the United States as a member of the Reynoldsburg City council.



After he and 120,000 fellow Bhutanese-Nepali’s were forcibly pushed out of Bhutan and their civil, human and political rights stripped away, Bhuwan says he will always be grateful to this nation for giving him a second chance to live his life and enjoy these freedoms in the greatest country in the world.  Bhuwan deeply values his American citizenship and its inalienable protected rights, and he now works to pay it forward and create new opportunities for the people of Reynoldsburg.



Bhuwan can be contacted by email at council-ward3@ci.reynoldsburg.oh.us or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bhuwan.pyakurel.79, and he invites you to reach out to him and meet up for a meal at one of the multiple Bhutanese Nepali restaurants in Central Ohio.



Learn more about Bhutanese culture through the Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio at https://www.bccoh.org/, or through the Lakshmi Narayan Mandir Buddhist Temple of Reynoldsburg Ohio, which can be reached at (740) 919-5779.

Music used in this episode supplied by filmmusic.io under standard license (https://filmmusic.io/standard-license)

Acid Trumpet by Kevin MacLeod - Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3340-acid-trumpet

Roll The Intro by Alexander Nakarada - Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4793-roll-the-intro

Loopster by Kevin MacLeod - Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/4991-loopster

Total Happy Up And Sunny by Sascha Ende® - Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/555-total-happy-up-and-sunny

Summer by Liron - Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6907-summer

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