When Jelena Milisav meets newly-arrived refugees with young children, her heart goes out to them. “I can’t feel their struggle, but I know my mom felt that.” Just over 20 years ago, Jelena and her family came to Greensboro as Bosnian refugees fleeing the wars that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. At the […]

Recently, I found myself enjoying the hospitality of my co-workers. It was the Friday in between Christmas and New Years’, and the CWS office was quiet. I had eaten an early lunch, and by early afternoon, Doha and Ghaisha finally realized they were hungry too. They stepped downstairs to buy a couple of meals for […]

On September 27, Yahya, Almaz, and their 8-year-old son stepped off a plane in Greensboro, North Carolina. For them, arriving in the United States was nothing short of a miracle. “Really, God saved us.” Yahya and Almaz were born in Ethiopia when the Derg, a communist regime, was still in power. Yahya’s family were farmers […]

Ajuwa and Imani were born in Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Growing up, they had a happy life in the city: Ajuwa with his parents and four siblings and Imani with her parents and six siblings. “We were living good in Bukavu. There […]

In May 2012, Ibrahim Salih and Nada Ahmed arrived in Greensboro as refugees from Sudan. They got on a plane to the United States after three and a half years of living as asylees in Egypt. “We didn’t even know English, not even a little English. Zero, zero, zero.” English proved to be only one […]

Mentzie Abdul-Rahman has always known that she wanted to practice social work. Both of her parents were community activists in Charlotte, and her father was an Imam who started the first Islamic Center there. When she was nine years old, her father organized an interfaith rally in Charlotte to advocate for human rights and social justice […]

Po Rmah came with her family to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam when she was 7 years old. Last week, she began classes at Western Carolina State University, receiving the John R. Kernodle scholarship and becoming the first person in her family to enroll in a 4-year college. Today, she took the […]

This year, CWS Greensboro has enjoyed the hard work and dedicated effort of Erin Sexton, who served as an Americorps ACCESS member. Under the umbrella of the national Americorps program, Americorps ACCESS is a state-wide project that places volunteers at local sites for one year to provide direct services to refugees and immigrants. Erin’s last […]

A refugee’s resettlement journey is not for the faint of heart. Besides the trauma of life-threatening situations and pointed persecution in their home countries, refugees suffer the grief of losing friends, family, and community.  Once in the United States, they must rebuild their lives from the ground up equipped merely with a suitcase of belongings […]

The 2015 Mosaic Festival, supported in part by Church World Service, Show of Hands, and Dance From Above, proved yet again to be an exuberant and fruitful celebration. The renowned event’s aim, to encourage appreciation of cultural diversity in the Greensboro area through music and exotic food, generated a healthy turnout of over five hundred […]