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Photography courtesy of Under the Same Tree
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Photography courtesy of Under the Same Tree
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Photography courtesy of Under the Same Tree
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Photography courtesy of Under the Same Tree
The women arrive, toddlers in tow, and settle to work. Suha carefully measures Himalayan pink salt, and they choose lemongrass and orange essential oils, Alah laughing when more oil than she expected drips from the bottle.
Do they use products like this at home? “Oh, no,” Suha says, explaining that they’re in Section 8 housing and a tub bath might blow their water allowance. But back home in Iraq?
“We have never known about it even,” says Sodad. “We know about lotions. Sometimes salt with water for a bath.” Nor did they do crafts: “I’ve never thought I have the talent,” she confides, “but your mind comes up with more and more ideas.”
They pour the mixtures into sterilized glass jars and debate pricing and their brand name. It’ll either be Babylon, the ancient city famous for its hanging gardens, or Ishtar, the name of a goddess.
Kaitlyn Gresham listens, smiling. Her organization, Under the Same Tree, has established several of these artisan co-ops. Refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Sri Lanka gather across St. Louis, learning to craft objects marketable here (which, alas, sometimes means colors less vivid and scents more vanilla than saffron).
The seeds of this tree were planted early: Gresham grew up outside Los Angeles, her neighborhood rough but colorful, with voices chattering not only in Spanish but also in Hindi, Urdu, Khmer… Then her family moved to St. Charles County, where their neighbors were all white and posted happy milestones on Facebook and kept their problems locked out of sight.
A few social studies classes later, Gresham realized that differences were even starker outside the U.S. By age 18, she was leading volunteer mission trips to Mexico and Haiti. Majoring in sociology, she started asking why the world was so…uneven…and just what was being done about that. She worked for three months in East Africa, and by the time she reached Webster University for a master’s in international relations, she was researching why good intentions so often failed.
Organizations would give equipment or build wells, she says, “then leave, and nobody was trained to fix them. Or build orphanages, which end up creating orphans; parents can’t feed their children, so turn them over.”
Gresham knew that those most vulnerable tended to be mothers whose husbands had died or abandoned them. She walked through open-air markets in Nicaragua and El Salvador, conversing in Spanish with the sellers, asking how they’d gotten their starts and what they thought about microfinancing.
It’s great, they said, if you’ve already got a profitable business or some capital. Otherwise, you’re considered too high a risk.
By now, Gresham had finished school, and her overactive brain was spinning unchecked. I have connections all over the world, she thought. An East African proverb flashed into her mind, one that urged people to come together every year under the oldest, biggest tree in their village and talk about their past, their challenges, their path forward.
She founded a nonprofit and named it Under the Same Tree. Then she flew to Nairobi. Used to do-gooders who came and left, families would offer her the best chair and a cup of tea and vanish for hours to prepare supper. Only when she’d returned three more times did they hand her a vegetable peeler and include her in the preparations. That’s when she learned that they were tired of being handed things, that they wanted ways to earn an income and build a better life for their kids. One woman’s husband had cheated on her, contracted AIDS, and died—and his family now blamed her and wanted to take her children and property. Another woman’s husband had left and started a new family in another village, but she couldn’t afford to divorce him. He, on the other hand, was free to do as he liked, because convention was shaped by centuries of polygamy.
Stranded, women went from church to church asking for handouts—or begged, or lived in the dump, or became prostitutes. Wouldn’t it be more cost-effective, Gresham thought, to empower them to earn their own living?
She began with what they already knew: selling veggies or crafts at market, sewing. Then she asked them to dream a little: What would they want to do? Partnering with other organizations, Under the Same Tree developed apprenticeships for a beauty salon, a café, a catering business… The collateral for business loans? Tuition stipends for their kids. None of the moms wanted that to end. As they paid back their small loans, they were given slightly larger loans, the increments keeping the business growth sustainable. “If Under the Same Tree closed tomorrow, they’d still have their business,” Gresham explains. “They’re not depending on rich Americans.”
The only male client, whose wife went off with a richer man, survived the “Mr. Mom” teasing and now runs a café; the son he was afraid wouldn’t finish grade school has now started college. A woman in Uganda was able to buy a refrigerator and outsell all the other vendors because her homemade juices were cold.
Here in St. Louis, refugees who can’t read or write, let alone speak English, are mastering PayPal, budgeting, marketing. And in their jewelry and wall hangings, several have begun incorporating delicate images of trees.
