Twenty-one Burmese refugees have joined the seasonal workforce during the busy holiday crunch at Chapel Hill, N.C.-based A Southern Season.

Shirley Thoms, director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) in Raleigh, contacted the Triangle's landmark gourmet market in July offering a new solution to the extra staffing needs required at the company's Hillsborough distribution center during the holiday season. USCRI provides authorized, reliable and multilingual personnel for employers in the Triangle area, and helps the refugees to more easily integrate into our country by providing them a place to stay, help with obtaining official paperwork, and by finding them jobs.

This group of refugees from Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar, was forced to leave their country because of war and/or persecution.

A Southern Season employees Codruta Roberts, human resources manager, and Elanie Cintron, production manager, met with Burmese native Malakee Sadi, who accompanies the new employees to their workplace the first few days to serve as translator and in order to make sure that everything is functional for both the refugees and the employer.

On Sept. 1, 2008, the first 12 Burmese employees arrived in Hillsborough for orientation and training to work on the gift production line assembling gift baskets and samplers in the warehouse. Another nine started during September with a plan to add another 30 in October, and possibly 20 and 30 more in November.

Transportation was an issue so Cintron secured a rental van from Enterprise and drives the group to and from Hillsborough every day from their home at Kingswood Apartments in Chapel Hill.

"We even tried to get a new bus line with the city, but were told that the city is publicly funded and cannot provide a 'private' line," said Cintron. "We then tried their vanpool services, but again were not able to rent one of their vans, since none were available."

"We are all very excited about this collaboration and our new seasonal staff. With a cheerful attitude and focused work ethic, it has been easy to welcome them to the A Southern Season family. We hope this is the start of a long relationship with this group of workers and USCRI."

For more information on the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI ), visit www.refugees.org. For more information on A Southern Season, visit www.southernseason.com.