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Inspiration, not charity: how refugees from Bhutan thrived in Blacktown
Refugees are not vulnerable they just need help to play to their strengths, says Om Dhungel, a ‘Blacktown boy’ from Bhutan
When I meet Om Dhungel in a cafe near his home, he tells me about Merryn Howell.
- by James Button; Photography by Carly Earl
- The Guardian
“She is my godmother,” he says, his eyes shining. “Every day I remember her.”
Howell (then Jones) was a skilled migrant placement officer.
Dhungel was a refugee of Nepalese ancestry from the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where he had been an engineer and a senior public servant at the Department of Telecommunications.
In 2001, after three years in Australia, Dhungel completed an MBA.
But over the…