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Connecting Cleveland (newspaper)

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Connecting Cleveland was a bilingual English-Nepali community newspaper founded in December 2013 by Bhutanese refugee youths in Cleveland, Ohio, including Hari Kumar Dahal and Ganga Ram Dahal. The first issue was published in January 2014 with 100 copies, and the monthly paper ran for over a year. It was the first youth-led Bhutanese-American publication of its kind and laid the groundwork for the BRAVE crisis response project launched by the same founders in 2020.

Connecting Cleveland was a bilingual English-Nepali community newspaper founded in December 2013 by Bhutanese refugee youths in Cleveland, Ohio. The first issue was published in the second week of January 2014. It was a pioneering initiative — the first youth-led, bilingual publication serving the Bhutanese-Nepali community in the Greater Cleveland area — and it operated as an entirely volunteer effort by high school students. The paper ran for over a year before its founders dispersed to attend universities across the country.[1]

The newspaper's founding team subsequently went on to create the Bhutanese Response Assistance Volunteer Effort (BRAVE) in 2020 and incorporated as Connecting Cleveland Community, Inc. (3C), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, demonstrating how a modest student project seeded broader civic engagement in the Bhutanese-American diaspora.

Founding and Team

The newspaper was created by a group of students attending Lincoln-West High School and Lakewood High School in Cleveland. The founding volunteer team included Ganga Ram Dahal, Ganesh Bhujel, Teeka Acharya, Reeta Acharya, Hari Kumar Dahal, and Mahendra Adhikari. The group formed as the "Connecting Cleveland" volunteer collective in December 2013 before publishing their inaugural edition the following month.

A programme coordinator working with the community described it as "the first initiative in the area in five years that youths are engaged in publishing [a] newspaper," underscoring the significance of the project in a refugee community where adult settlement challenges typically dominated organisational priorities.[2]

Content and Format

Connecting Cleveland was a four-page publication printed in colour, with articles in both English and Nepali. Its stated mission was to "connect all youths in community works, highlight the importance of education, [and] help our Bhutanese community members to learn English." Each issue contained educational and community awareness content, including practical information for refugee families navigating life in the United States.

The bilingual format served a dual purpose: it provided English-language content for younger, school-age readers who were becoming fluent in English, while simultaneously offering Nepali-language articles for parents and elders who remained more comfortable in their mother tongue. This bridging function was characteristic of diaspora media produced by the "1.5 generation" of refugees who arrived as children.[3]

Production and Distribution

The initial print run was 100 copies in full colour. The team funded the publication through donations collected from parents and community members, supplemented by support from an online printing company in the United Kingdom called "Newspaper Club." As a volunteer operation run by full-time high school students, the paper operated on a monthly publication schedule.

Distribution occurred primarily within the Bhutanese-Nepali community in Greater Cleveland. By 2014, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Bhutanese refugees had resettled in the Cleveland metropolitan area, with approximately 150 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese students attending Lincoln-West High School alone.[4]

Context: Bhutanese Community Media

Connecting Cleveland emerged at a time when the resettled Bhutanese community in the United States was beginning to develop its own media ecosystem. Other community media initiatives included online news platforms such as Bhutan News Network and community radio programmes, but youth-produced print media remained rare. The paper was part of a broader pattern of civic engagement among young Bhutanese Americans who had grown up navigating two cultures and two languages.

The newspaper ceased regular publication after approximately a year when its founding editors graduated from high school and enrolled in universities across the country. However, the relationships and organisational skills developed during the newspaper's run directly informed the creation of the BRAVE project in 2020, when several of the same founders reunited to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on immigrant families in Ohio.[5]

See Also

References

  1. Bhutan News Network. "Bhutanese youths in Cleveland, US, start newspaper." January 2014. https://bhutannewsnetwork.com/2014/01/bhutanese-youths-in-cleveland-us-start-newspaper/
  2. Bhutan News Network. "Bhutanese youths in Cleveland, US, start newspaper." January 2014. https://bhutannewsnetwork.com/2014/01/bhutanese-youths-in-cleveland-us-start-newspaper/
  3. Bhutan News Network. "Bhutanese youths in Cleveland, US, start newspaper." January 2014. https://bhutannewsnetwork.com/2014/01/bhutanese-youths-in-cleveland-us-start-newspaper/
  4. Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University. "Bhutanese." https://case.edu/ech/articles/b/bhutanese
  5. Spectrum News 1. "Cleveland Immigrants Launch BRAVE to Connect Families with Resources." December 2020. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2020/12/02/cleveland-immigrants-launch-brave-to-connect-families-with-resources-during-pandemic

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