2010.01.22: Niger RPCV Liz Conrad runs the Baobab Tree Arts Cafe, a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, and African immigrants and hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Niger: Peace Corps Niger : Peace Corps Niger: Newest Stories: 2010.01.22: Niger RPCV Liz Conrad runs the Baobab Tree Arts Cafe, a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, and African immigrants and hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op

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Niger RPCV Liz Conrad runs the Baobab Tree Arts Cafe, a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, and African immigrants and hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op

Niger RPCV Liz Conrad runs the Baobab Tree Arts Cafe, a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, and African immigrants and hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op

In Greensboro, The Baobab Tree Arts Cafe is a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, Glenwood residents and African immigrants. Its owner, Liz Conrad, hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op. Aside from a selection of African masks and clothing, most of what she sells in the store are locally made items. She envisions hosting workshops to teach immigrant and refugee women -- or anyone else needing work -- how to make crafts that could be sold at the store. She organized this meeting to see if others might help her do this and to get their feedback. Nearly two years after opening The Baobab Tree, she finds herself at a crossroads. She has struggled to sell enough merchandise to keep the doors open, and she has struggled to figure out exactly what she wants the space to be. She's also realizing that despite her best intentions to make it a community resource, the bottom line is that she needs money to keep it running. So she's looking for jobs to sustain it. And in the meantime, she has returned to something she has pursued most of her adult life: helping people from different countries.

Niger RPCV Liz Conrad runs the Baobab Tree Arts Cafe, a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, and African immigrants and hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op

The Baobab Tree tries to thrive

Sunday, January 24, 2010

(Updated 3:00 am)

By Tina Firesheets
Staff Writer

Caption: Artist Michael Rhys Scott (left) and knitter Joseph Szyleyko chat during a co-op meeting at The Baobab Tree Arts Cafe. Owner Liz Conrad sells African masks and clothing, plus locally made crafts. Photo: Joseph Rodriguez (News & Record)

On a cold, rainy evening in November, a small gathering of artists, writers and college students gathered inside The Baobab Tree.

It's pronounced BAY-oh-bob, and it's a small space sandwiched between an antique store and an indie record shop on Glenwood Avenue.

In Niger, town meetings and markets take place under the hardy, odd-looking baobab tree. It grows and flourishes in desert climates without rain for most of the year. And yet, they thrive for thousands of years, and all parts of the tree are useful.

In Greensboro, The Baobab Tree Arts Cafe is a combination of art gallery, gift shop and gathering place for writers, artists, Glenwood residents and African immigrants. Its owner, Liz Conrad, hopes to transform it into a community craft co-op.

Aside from a selection of African masks and clothing, most of what she sells in the store are locally made items. She envisions hosting workshops to teach immigrant and refugee women -- or anyone else needing work -- how to make crafts that could be sold at the store. She organized this meeting to see if others might help her do this and to get their feedback.

Nearly two years after opening The Baobab Tree, she finds herself at a crossroads.

She has struggled to sell enough merchandise to keep the doors open, and she has struggled to figure out exactly what she wants the space to be. She's also realizing that despite her best intentions to make it a community resource, the bottom line is that she needs money to keep it running. So she's looking for jobs to sustain it.

And in the meantime, she has returned to something she has pursued most of her adult life: helping people from different countries.

The world traveler

Conrad is the third child of six and also the middle sister.

She became interested in other cultures because her father, Tom Henson, was a Rotarian, and the family hosted many international students. When she graduated from Page High School, a Rotary scholarship enabled her to live in France for a year. It was 1969, a time, she says, when World War II was still fresh in the minds of the French people once under German occupation. Her host family lived near the German border. And while racial tension at home escalated between blacks and whites, Conrad also observed a similar -- though much more understated -- hostility between the French and Arab communities in France.

This inspired her to study Arabic when she returned home to attend UNC-Chapel Hill. While there, she majored in international studies and even took a course on Korean politics.

"I just tried to soak up everything international I could," she says.

She joined the Peace Corps after college and was sent to Niger (pronounced KNEE-jair) to work as a health educator. She was just 23 and very excited about the opportunity to be doing social work and live internationally.

"I imagined I would be in a straw hut, and I had a red brick hut, and I was ecstatic," she says.

She ran a baby wellness clinic, teaching mothers basic nutrition and hygiene.

"I saw a child die for the first time in my life, and you learn how fortunate we are and how little other people have," she says. "I learned almost everything I know in Niger."

While there, she met and married Chris Conrad, who worked for the humanitarian organization CARE International. His job took them to Mali, India, Chad, Uganda (after the fall of the country's military dictator Idi Amin), Republic of Congo and Togo. They often went to countries that were either recovering from or in the midst of civil war. During the next 20 years, Liz Conrad returned to Greensboro twice to deliver their children, then rejoined Chris where he was assigned.

Their daughter, Charlotte Johnson, now a human resources manager for Delta Air Lines, says the years overseas provided experiences most of her peers in the U.S. didn't have. For instance, while volunteering for a chimpanzee rescue project in Uganda, Johnson got to meet anthropologist Jane Goodall. Johnson, 30, still speaks French fluently and loves to travel.

Conrad worked with health and nutrition projects in the Republic of Congo and Togo, a small country in West Africa. She learned to be resourceful and to engage those she helped in problem-solving.

Their work was most difficult in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In 1992, they went to Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital and recently the site of immense devastation from earthquakes.

In Haiti, Chris Conrad ran food programs, while Liz Conrad got a job helping local community-based organizations. She says it was challenging because, in Haiti, people who stand up for their rights endanger their own lives. Conrad learned that implementing democracy is nearly impossible without education.

After two years in Haiti, Chris Conrad was transferred to the CARE headquarters in Atlanta. They lived there five years before heading to Johannesburg, South Africa. Liz Conrad enrolled in graduate school there, studying critical research at Nelson Mandela's alma mater, Wits University. She earned a degree in nonprofit management.

The Conrads divorced at the end of their South Africa tour, and Liz Conrad headed to Iraq in 2003 -- the first year of the Iraq war -- to work for the humanitarian organization USAID (United States Agency for International Development). She helped local councils learn democratic governance procedures, such as following Robert's Rules of Order or ensuring women got a chance to speak in meetings.

She eventually yearned to get reacquainted with her hometown and family.

"My roots were here," she says. "I could go anywhere, but I wanted to learn about the United States."

Conrad returned to Greensboro in 2005, 36 years after leaving to discover the world.

Back home

Conrad spent so much time in other countries, that coming home was almost like visiting a new land.

Although she bought a townhome near Lawndale Drive, Conrad started spending time in Glenwood, a neighborhood near UNCG. Glenwood residents and business owners hold regular neighborhood meetings and events to promote the area. The neighborhood association has worked to revitalize the economically depressed area and to improve its image. Conrad was drawn to the energy of the community's residents and business owners.

"I was fascinated that they were having meetings that were facilitated by the citizens," she says.

Looking for some kind of involvement there, she discovered a retail space for rent on Glenwood Avenue. She started the business in January 2008, knowing she wanted to do something that was community-oriented but without a fully designed business plan.

"I jumped into it before the plan was fully developed because the space was available," she says.

She just knew she wanted to establish some sort of cottage industry, and she didn't want to sell mass-produced items made in China. She sought jewelry and crafts made by local artists. She stocked the shelves with African clothing, multicultural cookbooks compiled by FaithAction International House and handmade ornaments from a Haitian children's organization.

Conrad proudly promotes all of the locally made items in her shop: hair accessories, note cards, felt hats, knit scarves, paintings and books written by local authors. Much of her inventory is made by Glenwood residents or those with ties to the neighborhood.

She also would like to host workshops to teach immigrant and refugee women how to make items they could sell in the shop and elsewhere. She envisions something along the lines of the fair-trade retailer Ten Thousand Villages.

But The Baobab Tree is more than just a gift shop.

One local artist, who goes by "Moose," offers weekly art lessons there for just $5 a class.

Two men from Niger visited the shop recently, greeting Conrad in French. They knew she had worked in Niger, and they talked about their time there. The men wanted to tell her about their new cross-cultural nonprofit and ask her advice about others they should approach.

Al Brilliant, who owns a bookstore in Glenwood, calls Conrad a "good neighbor and a good citizen."

"She's very community-minded, and that's what we're all about here," he said recently during a card game with fellow Glenwood resident Liz Brown.

The two play cards often in his shop. They said Glenwood is a friendly neighborhood where people want to help each other. Conrad embodies that, they said.

Conrad hopes that, like its namesake, The Baobab Tree will continue to grow as a community gathering place.

This year, she plans to emphasize the space as a cafe and workshop for craftspeople.

But despite her enthusiasm and good intentions, Conrad isn't yet selling enough merchandise to cover her operating costs. And she's looking for help.

Social entrepreneurship

There's an academic term for Conrad's vision for The Baobab Tree.

It's called social entrepreneurship. That means Conrad's main focus isn't to turn a profit but to do public good. UNCG instructor Channelle James teaches a social entrepreneurship class and hopes her students can help Conrad develop a business plan, which other students could later use as a model.

The women met when Conrad attended James' women's entrepreneurial leadership workshop. Social entrepreneurs are special because they want to put the resources they garner back into the community, James says.

"People like Liz often worked in professions where they've been doing the work, but they haven't had the business courses, accounting that sort of thing," James says. "But she was smart enough to go to other people and say, 'I don't know how to do this.' "

In Conrad's case, James recommends building a hybrid business: part of the venture could be for profit; the other part would be nonprofit. Conrad could apply for grants for funding. But the challenge would be to distinguish one from the other. She also recommends a co-op model, where several partners could pool their time, energy and resources toward the effort.

James says Conrad's training and prior work experience is an asset: "She's seen grassroots sustainable programs work."

Still, Conrad needs money to pay her rent. She has even considered leaving Glenwood, but she doesn't want to do that. She has applied for jobs.

"Even a part-time job or small salary would be helpful," she says.

So far, her job hunt has turned up only more volunteer work. She recently started leading an English conversation and handicrafts class with African and Vietnamese refugees through the Center for New North Carolinians.

And she's still seeking possible partners who could be interested in a co-op venture.

"She's an exact example of what we're trying to teach, but she's also an exact example of what social entrepreneurs struggle with," James says.

In other words, good intentions and drive versus a lack of funding.

But James says social entrepreneurs can prevail over their obstacles: "You may not have all the resources in the world, but you're so committed to the project that you're willing to do whatever it takes to put it together."

Johnson, Conrad's daughter, describes her mother as courageous and free-spirited.

"When she decides to do something, she puts all of her energy toward it," Johnson says.

Conrad says the past two years have been the most difficult of her life and that, at times, she has felt like a fish out of water.

"I have lessons learned about starting and running a small business. I would do it differently if I could," she says. "Doing anything like this by oneself is pretty much impossible. You need partners and a team to really make it worthwhile."



Contact Tina Firesheets at 373-3498 or tinafiresheets@news-record.com





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