Gagan Dahal

Gagan Dahal is a Bhutanese-American community organiser based in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2020 he was one of seven founders of BRAVE (Bhutanese Response Assistance Volunteer Effort), a volunteer group that delivered food, supplies and public-health information to immigrant families in Greater Cleveland during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1] He co-founded the effort with his brother Hari Dahal.

The Dahal family resettled in the United States in 2013, part of the third-country resettlement of Lhotshampa refugees from camps in eastern Nepal. Cleveland is one of the larger Bhutanese resettlement centres in Ohio.

Community work

While attending Lincoln-West High School and Lakewood High School in the Cleveland area, Gagan and Hari Dahal helped launch Connecting Cleveland, a bilingual newspaper intended to bridge the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community and the wider city.^[1]

BRAVE grew out of that earlier work. As the pandemic spread in 2020, the group organised volunteers — among them nurses, drivers and shoppers — to reach immigrant households where English-language public-health messaging was not landing. By the end of 2020 BRAVE had assisted more than 300 families in the Cleveland area.^[1] The organisation later registered as a nonprofit under the name Connecting Cleveland Community.

References

1. "Cleveland Immigrants Launch BRAVE to Connect Families with Resources During Pandemic" — Spectrum News 1 Ohio
2. "Bhutanese" — Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University (community context)