Chautari Knitting Circle

The Chautari Knitting Circle is a women's community group among Bhutanese refugees in Burlington, Vermont, that promotes psychosocial resilience through the practice of traditional crafts. Named after the Nepali word chautari, referring to a communal resting place beneath a shade tree where travellers gather and converse, the group is one of several grassroots initiatives that address the mental health and social integration needs of the Bhutanese refugee community in Vermont's Chittenden County. The circle operates alongside and is complemented by the New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) agricultural programme, which similarly draws on familiar skills to support refugee well-being.^[1]

Background

Approximately 2,000 Bhutanese refugees were resettled in Chittenden County, Vermont, between 2008 and 2017, making them the largest refugee group in the area during that period. Many had spent up to two decades in refugee camps in Nepal after being expelled from Bhutan during the refugee crisis of the early 1990s. The city of Burlington itself hosts a community of approximately 600 Bhutanese refugees. Resettlement brought freedom from camp life but also new challenges: linguistic isolation, unfamiliar social systems, harsh New England winters, and limited access to culturally appropriate mental health services.^[2]

The Knitting Circle

The Chautari group emerged organically from the Bhutanese women's existing social practices. In Bhutan and in the refugee camps, women gathered regularly for handicrafts, conversation, and mutual support — activities that served important psychosocial functions even when not explicitly framed as mental health interventions. The knitting circle transplants these practices to the diaspora, providing a space where women can engage in familiar activities while building community in an unfamiliar environment.

Research on the Bhutanese community in Burlington has documented that participation in activities such as knitting and farming "promotes feelings of self-worth and identity by drawing on existing skill sets from Bhutan or Nepal." These community groups help fill what researchers have identified as a mental health-care gap, addressing culturally specific concepts of distress — dukha (sadness), manaasik bhoj (mental burden), and tanab (tension) — that may not trigger engagement with formal Western mental health services. The Chautari circle functions as what scholars have described as an intervention that is "seldom explicitly linked with a 'psychosocial' agenda" yet effectively addresses psychosocial needs.^[3]

New Farms for New Americans

Complementing the Chautari circle is the New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) programme, a community farming initiative administered by the Association of Africans Living in Vermont (AALV). Founded in 2008 as a workforce development programme, NFNA began with 15 African refugee women and expanded rapidly, reaching 100 participants by its third year. The programme operates on approximately 7.5 acres across two sites: 4.5 acres at the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington's New North End and 3 acres in Burlington's historic Intervale, a floodplain that has served as food-producing land for generations.^[4]

Over 50 per cent of NFNA's approximately 100 annual farmers are Bhutanese. Bhutanese gardens are characteristically full of mustard greens — dried, fermented, and prepared into what one participant described as "the national curry of Nepal" — along with preserved radishes and other South Asian crops. In 2015, participants collectively produced an estimated 7 tonnes (14,000 pounds) of fresh produce, with individual farmers saving up to $3,000 annually on food costs. The programme received a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2020.^[5]

Vermont Bhutanese Association

The Vermont Bhutanese Association provides broader organisational support to the community, while AALV — which expanded its mission in 2009 to serve all refugees in Vermont, not only Africans — offers case management, workforce development, behavioural health awareness, and interpreter services through multilingual staff serving refugees from 35 countries. These institutional structures provide the framework within which grassroots initiatives like the Chautari circle operate.^[6]

Significance

The Chautari Knitting Circle represents a model of refugee resilience that operates outside formal therapeutic frameworks. By preserving familiar social practices in an unfamiliar setting, it addresses the psychosocial needs of Bhutanese refugee women in ways that are culturally congruent and community-driven. Together with the NFNA farming programme, the circle demonstrates how existing skills and knowledge — rather than externally designed interventions — can serve as foundations for well-being in the diaspora.

See Also

• Bhutanese Diaspora in the United States
• Bhutanese Refugee Crisis
• Lhotshampa
• Woven in Exile

References

1. Chase, L.E. "Psychosocial resilience among resettled Bhutanese refugees in the US." Forced Migration Review. https://www.fmreview.org/young-and-out-of-place/chase
2. Chase, L.E. "Psychosocial resilience among resettled Bhutanese refugees in the US." Forced Migration Review. https://www.fmreview.org/young-and-out-of-place/chase
3. Chase, L.E. "Psychosocial resilience among resettled Bhutanese refugees in the US." Forced Migration Review. https://www.fmreview.org/young-and-out-of-place/chase
4. Refugee Resettlement in Small Cities. "Case Study: New Farms for New Americans (NFNA)." https://www.spatializingmigration.net/sites-and-case-studies/new-farms-for-new-americans/
5. Refugee Resettlement in Small Cities. "Case Study: New Farms for New Americans (NFNA)." https://www.spatializingmigration.net/sites-and-case-studies/new-farms-for-new-americans/
6. Association of Africans Living in Vermont. "About AALV." https://www.aalv-vt.org/about