Presidential Statement

The first Nepalese organization Kentucky Nepali Society (KNS) to unite Nepalese communities in Lexington, KY was established in 2004. In 2008, a second similar organization Forum of Nepalese in America (FONA) was established to serve same communities. However, the two different organizations’ existence in one small city divided the communities into two different groups of people instead of one unified group of Nepali. This strained the ability of the organization to unify and serve the people, especially neutrals and newcomers. To address this issue, efforts were made to unify these two organizations but with little success. Finally, after ten years of planning and negotiating, the two organizations dissolved. On March 2019, a new organization ANKA was established and a new executive body initiated by members of the community.

This has been a long and collective effort started and carried on by Nepalese people who live in and around Lexington, KY. It has been a long and complicated process and we’ve made a lot of progress over the years. A special thank you goes to the community organizers who first established such an organization to unite and serve the community. Further, a big thank you are is given to those who continued to unite these two organizations and ultimately unite the entire Nepali population of the region under one guiding organization.

Following physical unification, being united by hearts, minds, and feelings is still a work in progress. Our goal now is not to embark on a special project but rather build our organization fundamentally in a manner that future generations can build upon. These include the accomplishment of basic things, such as building an information system, organizing a database of people and events, and unify the Nepalese people of Lexington. I would like to request that all community members help support this movement.

Thank you.

Laxmi Khadka

President of ANKA