Rasim Mueen and Sendes Abd Zead watch the Dumpster outside their Parkview Place apartment for things they can use. The couple, both 32, have collected a stained pillow and faded blankets that they've washed in the bathtub and hung to dry on a cord strung across the apartment's one bedroom. They've found stuffed animals for their 6-year-old son, Dear Rasim, to play with, and a shower curtain cut into a circle to serve as a tablecloth.

The Iraqi family has lived in New Hampshire for nearly a month. They came to Concord as refugees, settled here by Lutheran Social Services, a federal refugee resettlement contractor. But they feel they have had little help.

"We are human, and we come here to get a better life, not to pull the things we need from the trash," Abd Zead, 32, said through a translator.

The system for resettling refugees in Concord is imperfect, sometimes to such a degree that refugees - at least in the beginning - feel abandoned. Groups that work with them, including Lutheran Social Services and organizations started by refugees, are making a new effort to evaluate that system and determine what is working and what is not.

They've begun meeting once a month to talk about where their assistance falls short and what can be done about it. The hope is that groups that have historically disagreed on how best to help the refugees or that have simply not communicated about their work will join forces.

Refugees are people who have been persecuted for race, ethnicity, religion, politics or social standing and are selected for entrance to the United States. Lutheran Social Services settles people primarily in Concord and Laconia.

While different groups of refugees have different needs, many of the things they struggle with highlight what all poor people in New Hampshire face: a shortage of affordable housing, poor public transportation, and inadequate access to jobs or medical care.

The effort to collectively address those issues comes at an important time. Of the estimated 255 refugees that Lutheran Social Services has settled in New Hampshire this fiscal year, which ends Tuesday, about 160 came to Concord, according to program manager Augustin Ntabaganyimana. That's the largest caseload for Concord in the program's 10-year history.

Most have been from Bhutan or Iraq, a pattern expected to continue. As many as 16 Bhutanese families have been placed in Loudon Road's Morning Star apartments.

The meetings have been organized by Cathy Chesley, former head of the Hopkinton Independent School, who helped students there raise money to buy gardening supplies for several refugee families that kept a large garden on school grounds. Chesley and other volunteers would bus the gardeners to and from their Concord homes. Through that work, she met volunteers with the Concord Multicultural Project who work with refugees.

Chesley retired from the school in June and began working for New Hampshire Catholic Charities as the director of immigration and refugee services. She met Trudy Bantle in the organization's Concord office. Bantle works with refugees but didn't know about the Concord Multicultural Project, and that group didn't know about her, Chesley said.

"I said, 'This is nuts,' " she said.

Some groups have had a history of tense relations as they compete over grant money, volunteers' time or dueling philosophies of how to help. Volunteers with the Concord Multicultural Project and some refugees complain about Lutheran Social Services not adequately preparing refugees for life in the United States or being unwilling to work with outside groups. However, many also say that simply pointing fingers at Lutheran, which is limited by its federal funding and specific mission, is unfair.

Chesley said the monthly meetings, which began in August, are an effort to put that tension aside.

"It's working together, trying to keep our personal turf issues on the back burner and identifying what each group's niche is," she said.

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