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Remember Mamie Kosia, the pretty but subdued Liberian refugee whom photographer H. Scott Hoffmann showed a couple of Sundays back, trying to warm her feet in front of a space heater at the Apache Street apartment where she and her child were facing eviction?

Crime-wise, it's still an open city over at Apache, where gunfire is a regular enough sound that even refugees who have come here from such war zones as the Congo and Liberia don't let their kids play outside. But thanks to a group of volunteers starting to come together, and a few readers who called to help, there are other improvements:

Several refugees have good prospects of landing restaurant jobs this week, having done preliminary interviews, according to volunteers from nearby St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Over the past week, St. Mary's parishioners Randal and Kimberly Romie helped churches around the city collect badly needed cribs, household supplies and toiletries to donate. Several readers kicked in rent money for March, and as of Friday, the two dozen or so families were caught up on their rent and utilities.

And finally, Kosia found a job as a part-time hairstylist, and also had a lead on a full-time supermarket job.

"She's just excited to be able to help pay her rent," said Romie, who visited Friday with Kosia, orphaned at a young age by the brutal fighting in her home country, and left to fend for herself, a younger sister, and her own son Claudio, age 5.

No disputing that Greensboro's 20-year track record as a refugee resettlement city has hit a big bump in the road with the downturn and unemployment rate. Nevertheless, one glance at the most recent report from the U.N. Refugee Agency, and it is clear that the world fire storms that displace people in the first place are not taking any time off - in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Before the war, that last country was home to Marie-Jeanne Bombongo. She's a Greensboro newcomer readers might recall from a photo by Nelson Kepley in which the young mother showed how she held her son close the day a bullet hit the wall outside her apartment at Avalon Trace.

But make no mistake: She's better off here than going back to the Congo at this particular time. According to the U.N. report, Ugandan rebels fighting under the sardonic name "Lord's Resistance Army" last weekend plundered a parish hospital there, killed six people, kidnapped 21, and sent thousands more fleeing into Sudan, the latest in months of brutal and deadly attacks.

And much as we Americans are accused of being isolated, insular, failing to keep up with world events, readers are moved by the plight of the Africans - recession or no recession - just as the city was touched by the journey of the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan in 2001, or the Montagnards, the ragtag "Lost Army" of the Vietnam War, arriving here in 1992.

Said Patricia Olds, a relative newcomer to Greensboro, with financial worries of her own: "I don't know what I can do, but I want to do something. My problems are nothing compared to theirs. They have nobody to fall back on. How can I help them?"

Wrote Nancy Prairie: "I'm just one mom of two young children ... but I want to do something to help. These people are in our own backyard!"

The biggest needs, say our St. Mary's friends, are job leads and sponsors to help the refugees adjust. Seeing as Westover and other churches in town have helped families pay rents but have now depleted their funds, volunteers are turning to the community to help stave off eviction proceedings until the most recent refugees find jobs.

To help, or to be a sponsor, please send an e-mail to the volunteers at holy3ministry@aol.com or write: Holy Family Ministries, 415 Pisgah Church Road, #164, Greensboro, NC 27455.