{"id":320,"date":"2020-04-23T19:52:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T19:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2020-06-04T22:12:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T22:12:06","slug":"insidesb-episode1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/insidesb-episode1\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 1: The Beginning of Sweet Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/anchor.fm\/insidesb\/embed\/episodes\/1--The-Beginning-of-Sweet-Beginnings-edcbuc\/a-a227mfu\" height=\"200px\" width=\"1000px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Are you searching for an innovative and sustainable way to carry out your social mission? Or already planning to start a social enterprise, but struggling to come up with a viable idea? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode of Inside Sweet Beginnings, Brenda Palms Barber shares how she knew her nonprofit needed a social enterprise and how she came up with the idea for Sweet Beginnings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She tells her story of coming to Chicago to lead the North Lawndale Employment Network (Sweet Beginnings&#8217; parent nonprofit) and explains how quantifying the impact of mass incarceration in North Lawndale led her to social enterprise as a way to make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re sharing some extra materials about the foundations of NLEN&#8217;s and Sweet Beginnings&#8217; work, which we think will serve as a helpful starting point as you develop your own mission and core values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fill out the interest form to the right to have these materials sent directly to your email!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Timeline of NLEN and Sweet Beginnings from 1998 &#8211; present<\/li><li>NLEN&#8217;s mission and impact statements<\/li><li>NLEN&#8217;s core principles and values<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a question you&#8217;d like us to answer in future episodes? Thinking through how to start your own social enterprise? Send us a note through the interest form!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"473\" height=\"264\" src=\"https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screen-Shot-2020-04-22-at-2.05.17-PM-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screen-Shot-2020-04-22-at-2.05.17-PM-2.png 473w, https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screen-Shot-2020-04-22-at-2.05.17-PM-2-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Screen-Shot-2020-04-22-at-2.05.17-PM-2-150x84.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background is-style-wide\" style=\"background-color:#edc200;color:#edc200\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress-670334-2206764.cloudwaysapps.com\/insidesb\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><span class=\"has-inline-color has-luminous-vivid-amber-color\">View all episodes of Inside Sweet Beginnings<\/span><\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-background is-style-wide\" style=\"background-color:#edc200;color:#edc200\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2>Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda: <\/strong>I loved seeing all these people show up and \nlines around the building for people to sign up to get into our program,\n and it was fabulous, until we realized that we didn\u2019t have enough jobs \nfor them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>Hi, and welcome to Inside Sweet Beginnings. Thanks for joining us for our first ever episode. Our new podcast about Sweet Beginnings gives you an inside look at our social enterprise. We\u2019ll tell you about our many challenges and successes, and share some of the lessons and best practices we\u2019ve learned over the last fifteen years. We hope that learning about our work will help you make an impact in your own community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, we are starting at the beginning of Sweet Beginnings. How\ndid Sweet Beginnings come to be? And why did we choose to work with bees? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The story of Sweet Beginnings starts with the story of our parent\nnonprofit, the North Lawndale Employment Network \u2013 NLEN for short. And the\nstory of NLEN starts with Brenda Palms Barber, our president and CEO. She has\nled the organization since its inception in 1999, and Sweet Beginnings is her\nbrainchild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My name is Alice and I work at Sweet Beginnings. A few months ago,\nI sat down with Brenda to get her telling of this history. The rest of our\npodcasts will be more conversational, but for this one, we\u2019re going to let\nBrenda take it away. I asked her to start by telling me about the work she was\ndoing before she came to Chicago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> It starts with me working at the Piton \nFoundation, which is located in Denver, Colorado. And I was hired to \nwork on a special initiative called the Jobs Initiative, and it was one \nof five states -well, one of five cities \u2013 selected to partner with the \nAnnie E. Casey Foundation, based out of Baltimore, to explore how to \nhelp the unemployed access employment. And it was really interesting \nbecause, I don\u2019t want to get too far off here, but just so you \nunderstand, that the initiative was exploring five different ways or \nmethodologies that communities or cities were approaching unemployment \nin their neighborhoods. And what they knew for sure that eventually \nmanifested, was how disproportionate \u2013 the disproportionate number of \nAfrican Americans and Latinos were disconnected from the labor market. \nAnd how do we reengage these folks? So Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver, New \nOrleans, and there\u2019s always one more, were the five cities that were \nselected. And so that\u2019s where I was, so I was hired to work on that \ninitiative, and I specialized \u2013 my title was that I was the Director of \nCommunity Connections, and so I was responsible for connecting and \nmeeting with folks that were in particular zip codes, because we used a \nzip codes strategy, mostly of color, and talk to them about how they \naccess jobs. And we developed, interestingly enough, what\u2019s called a \nsort of a coaching model, but we didn\u2019t call it coaching. And we \nidentified the fact that the barber at the barbershop, for example, was \nfilled with lots of information about jobs and where to go. Because \npeople would share so much with him in his chair. So people like that, \nand there\u2019s the woman, this lovely woman called Maria, who owned a \nrestaurant in the heart of the Latino community, and everybody loved \nher. It was a small little restaurant, but she knew everything that was \nhappening in the neighborhood, right? So these are kind of people that \nare gossipy too. So the idea was that I could connect with them and \nfigure out how these informal networks around employment work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what happened is the work got a lot of attention, I loved it,\nwe had a whole training manual and I did all this work on it. But then, the\nAnnie E. Casey Foundation was evidently approached by folks here in Chicago, by\nthe Steans Family Foundation. Who was also figuring out that they wanted to do\nwork around employment. And so I don\u2019t know how it came about, but someone said\nwell, you know, maybe you should talk to Brenda Palms Barber, who\u2019s doing this\nwork in Denver around informal networks and how low-income people access jobs.\nSo they were like yeah, let\u2019s have her come in. So I was invited to come here\nto Chicago to do a workshop. And I did, and really was excited by what I saw,\nby what I heard, did my workshop, had a piece of Chicago-style pizza, and back\nout. So then about three months later, they reach out to me again, and I\nthought oh cool another workshop, and they were like no, we\u2019re interested in\nlearning if you would be interested in applying for a position as the Executive\nDirector of this new organization we\u2019re putting together. And I\u2019m like, what?\nBecause I thought, what would a girl from the west coast \u2013 I\u2019m from Tacoma, you\nknow \u2013 how effective would I be in the city of Chicago, right? And on the West\nSide, nonetheless. So, um, I was like, well sure, you know, I\u2019d be interested\nin interviewing, not taking the opportunity that seriously. Flew here,\ninterviewed with these folks, fell in love with their vision of what North\nLawndale could be. I had not experienced the kind of poverty in the United\nStates that I did here. I\u2019d experienced poverty outside of the \u2013 like in Mexico\nand other places I\u2019ve been, but nothing like that in the US. And so they\ntouched me. I interviewed with six people at one time \u2013 major \u2013 it was\nfascinating and intimidating but wonderful all at the same time. So a couple of\nweeks later I\u2019m called and they asked me \u2013 to tell me I was selected for the\nposition and would I accept the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>This effort was initiated by the Steans \nFamily Foundation, which is a Chicago foundation that focuses all their \ngrantmaking on the neighborhood of North Lawndale. For many months, \nNorth Lawndale residents and community leaders had engaged in \nconversations about the most important issues in North Lawndale. They \nreached a consensus that employment and housing were the two most urgent\n issues \u2013 and since there were already housing efforts underway, they \ndecided to focus on employment. And that\u2019s when Brenda arrived, in \nFebruary of 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda: <\/strong>That\u2019s a really important point, that what \nthe community originally envisioned and what I was attracted to \ndefinitely took a strategic turn. So what drew me to the job opportunity\n and what they wanted was for NLEN to really serve as an intermediary \norganization. And not for the reasons that I was interested in that as a\n strategy, but I think that they decided that they didn\u2019t want to favor \nany one particular organization over the other around investing any \nmoney because it\u2019s such a competitive, small community, that the more \npolitically correct route was to create a separate entity that would be \nan intermediary that would help build capacity of the existing nonprofit\n organizations focusing on workforce development in North Lawndale. And \nso that fit for me because that was similar to a role that I had played \nin Denver with building all of these unique tools, right, these tools \nthat were employer-driven to help raise the quality of job readiness \ntrainings, the work I have done with coaches at the neighborhood level \nand how to help people access jobs, and developing strategies for how we\n can do that better. And so for me I love the idea of all of these \ndifferent organizations coming together and us as a community defining \nwhat job readiness is, what we define as retention, what sectors make \nmost sense for our community. And so those sectors had been identified \nwas construction, manufacturing, healthcare, and childcare. So those \nwere the four industries that the community spent time on eighteen \nmonths prior to my arrival. So I love that they understood a sectorial \napproach to workforce development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there were lots of things that excited me, coupled with the\nunfortunate depth of poverty, and these people who were inspired and had light\nand hope for improving this community. I\u2019m like, I\u2019m on board, I want to be a\npart of that. So that\u2019s what happened and so that\u2019s what I did for the first\nthree years. I convened quarterly meetings in the neighborhood. They were often\nheld at Sinai Community Institute where we were incubated, and we would have\nwell over 100 people that would show up on a quarterly basis to these meetings.\nAnd it\u2019s where I would talk about either the studies that we were engaged in,\ntalking about having sectorial experts talk about different things, lifting up\ncertain partners and what they were doing, and then launching the job readiness\ntraining program that we offered so we could talk about job readiness in a very\ndifferent way, as it relates to how we\u2019re gonna define that in North Lawndale.\nSo we did that for the first three years of our organization\u2019s life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> One of the first things Brenda had to do as \nthe leader of this new organization was to understand the root cause of \nthe high unemployment rate. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> I sat in a lot of meetings, I had a big \nintroductory meeting, was really excited about it, but then started to \nhear themes around high unemployment in this community. And everyone \nagreed that employment was a big issue, but no one really understood \nwhy. And it was really apparent to me that I\u2019m like, well, if the \nunemployment rate here is like people are saying 28, 38, 58 percent, I\u2019m\n like, well what\u2019s the driver? And people just wouldn\u2019t know. And then I\n started to hear things about this community, people would say \u2014 I \nremember having the taxi driver have a difficult time even wanting to \nbring me here. So I thought, ooh, this is that kind of community where \npeople didn\u2019t want to go. So there\u2019s all the stigma that was associated \nwith North Lawndale that I also had to sort of understand, and become \naware of. But I thought, that can\u2019t be the reason why people aren\u2019t \nworking. So, long story short, I start to come to the conclusion that \nthere\u2019s a theme around people returning, or my son is coming back, my \ncongregation members are coming back. This coming back theme is what I \nstarted to focus on because it was coming up in almost every \nconversation. And I realized that it was just another term at the time \nfor people returning from incarceration. You know, Alice, at the time, \ntwenty years ago, right, incarceration was \u2013 it was a taboo, it was a \nword that people didn\u2019t want to talk about. The pressure and the stigma \nassociated with having a criminal record was so much more difficult than\n it is even today. So that\u2019s why people didn\u2019t say prison or returning \nor incarceration. Today we\u2019re more forward about it. So then \nunderstanding that this is a community that was deeply impacted by mass \nincarceration, it was important for me to understand how do you measure \nthat, what does that look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I commissioned a study with a wonderful organization called\nCenter for Impact Research, or SIR \u2013 CIR, rather. And they spent two and a half\nyears with funding that we received from the Woods Fund of Chicago to help us\nunpack the impact of mass incarceration in North Lawndale. And as a result we developed a report\nand published a report in 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we produced that study, which allowed me to say, different from\nany other community, that 57% of the adults in North Lawndale, over the age of\n18, have had some involvement with the criminal justice system. And that blew\npeople away. Because we actually had measured it. And I could say this is a\nreal problem in our neighborhood. So after that, we understood that I could not\ndo workforce development without including that population. So inclusion of\nthose with criminal records was always a given, no matter what we were going to\ndo, and as a matter of fact, it rose to a level of priority when you just think\nalmost 60% of the people here have criminal records, so duh, this is why the\nunemployment rate is so high here. That was a really important thing to unpack\ntoo, is that it\u2019s not that people didn\u2019t want to work. It\u2019s that people\ncouldn\u2019t work because of the stigma associated with having a criminal record.\nThat was it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>Once Brenda had a strong understanding of the\n social problem, she went on to launch the U-Turn Permitted program, \nwhich remains NLEN\u2019s flagship job readiness program to this day. At that\n point, NLEN was not yet a direct services organization. You\u2019ll remember\n that Brenda said earlier that the original vision was for NLEN to serve\n as an intermediary organization. I asked her how we made the transition\n from that role as an intermediary to the direct services organization \nwe are today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> The idea with U-Turn Permitted originally \nwas to incubate this model that could eventually be rolled out to an \norganization in North Lawndale that had built their capacity to run this\n program. And it would give NLEN the flexibility to continue to be more \nof a research and development kind of entity as well as an intermediary.\n So I loved those kinds of concepts. What changed was when we started to\n receive funding from the city, ultimately the North Lawndale Employment\n Network was the contractor or -ee, the contractee. And we were \nultimately as an organization held accountable for achieving the \noutcomes that the contracts from the city required. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was at that point I decided that we need to sort of assume\nresponsibility for the outcomes and so therefore \u2013 and the other piece that\nhappened was that we had launched U-Turn Permitted too, and we also had a\ncontract with the city around that, that I couldn\u2019t roll out to anybody because\nthat whole concept wasn\u2019t there, and so we sort of backed in to becoming a\ndirect service entity. And it was in part because no one else in the\nneighborhood was actually providing comprehensive workforce development. So\neverybody had a little bitty piece that they were doing. But it wasn\u2019t\ncomprehensive, right? And so that was a problem, and then I think, and then\nafter we did our study, we recognized that 57% of these adults had some\ninvolvement with the criminal justice system, I\u2019m like, well, they can\u2019t do\nchildcare, they can\u2019t do healthcare, they can do manufacturing, they can do construction,\nbut we still have to get them ready and deal with the stigma. So that pulled us\ninto that direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that was the pivot. So three and a half years in, I had to do\nsomething different and create a response to the organization. So we have this\nfunky name of the North Lawndale Employment Network, when in fact we are\nproviding direct services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>Okay, so back to the U-Turn Permitted \nprogram. NLEN had launched this job training program that focused on \nworking with returning citizens. However, Brenda quickly started to \nrealize that this job training alone wasn\u2019t enough to meet the needs of \nour clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> At the same time, U-Turn Permitted was \nhaving record-breaking numbers of people showing up for our programming,\n and we were over at United Baptist Church, so we had enough space, but \nwe didn\u2019t have enough jobs at the end of the day. We would have thirty \nto forty people in a class and eventually we had to scale that down to \nlike twenty-five. So there were waiting lists and people were just glad \nsomebody was doing something about this population that had been \noverlooked and ignored. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I loved seeing all these people show up and lines around the\nbuilding for people to sign up to get into our program, and it was fabulous,\nuntil we realized that we didn\u2019t have enough jobs for them. And the employers\nin North Lawndale were just not open to hiring people with criminal records. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> I asked what that unwillingness looked like. \nWere employers outright rejecting Brenda\u2019s inquiries about hiring NLEN\u2019s\n clients? Or were they expressing willingness to hire but then rejecting\n applicants in the interviews? &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda: <\/strong>So I would have conversations with folks \nfirst, because I had to get a understanding of the lay of the land, who \nworks here, who are the employers, and tell them who I was, and then \ntell them what type of training and program services we were offering, \nand that they were employer-informed. I talked about work ethic and the \nstudies we\u2019d conducted, the focus groups that we\u2019d had, so they really \nknew that I knew what I was talking about, and what their needs were, \nreducing the cost of turnover, and hitting them in places that really \nmeant a lot to their small businesses and what have you. And so then \nthey would be like oh, well, you know, well listen, well we\u2019re not \nhiring now, but maybe if you could, come back in a couple of weeks or \ncome back in a couple of months and we\u2019ll see what we\u2019ve got going, so I\n would do that, and no, sorry, nothing, we still don\u2019t have anything \nopening, but thanks. So these really polite brush-offs, or they would \nsay yes, send someone over on next Tuesday, we\u2019d be happy to give them \nan interview.&nbsp; So the person would show up on Tuesday and the front desk\n person or the receptionist wouldn\u2019t have a clue, didn\u2019t know what \u2013 so \nwe\u2019re talking with the leadership but they hadn\u2019t trickled that down to \nthe front desk and so people would be like well I was told to come over \nand I had an interview \u2013 we don\u2019t know anything about it. So there would\n be those kinds of rejections, face to face. It was just really \nhorrible. Or sometimes employers would say things like, well, you know, \nas long as they\u2019ve been out of prison for at least eight years, then we \ncan consider them. And I\u2019m like, wow, the need is far greater than that.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> Overall, it was clear that employers were \njust not interested in hiring from this population. And then there was \nanother big factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> The other fact that I want to keep in mind \nthat\u2019s important maybe to the story is that 9\/11 happened too. And in \n2001. And what happened is, all the employers who had hired people with \ncriminal records \u2013 cause people didn\u2019t really care as much. It was \nquiet, but employers would privately go, yeah we\u2019ll go ahead and give \nyou a job, you know? Car rental places, I mean, airports \u2013 but after \n9\/11, everyone started conducting background checks. And as a result, \nhundreds and hundreds of people lost their jobs. Because it hadn\u2019t been \nofficially known that Johnny had a record. So you have people who had \ngood jobs, holding them down, that were now flooding the work, flooding \nthe labor market. And then you had those that were coming out of prison.\n And what we also understood was that roughly 40,000 inmates are being \nreleased out of state prison, and then of those 40,000, 50% come back to\n Chicago. And of the 50% that come back to Chicago, 50% of that group, \nright, so about 10,000 people come back to the west side, west side zip \ncodes. So it was just crazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> Around the same time, Brenda started thinking\n about another need, which just so happened to converge with the need \nfor job opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> So I participated, I was invited to \nparticipate in, was it a 6 month program for new executive directors. It\n was almost like it was like perfectly designed for me, but there were a\n number of people that applied but they only selected like six of us. \nAnd it was managed by an organization called Women\u2019s Self Employment \nProject. And they had money from the Macarthur Foundation and they had \nmoney from the Chicago Community Trust to help build capacity of new \nexecutive directors. It was really quite lovely. So I applied, was \naccepted, and the purpose of that training wasn\u2019t just to help new \nexecutive directors. It was to think creatively and innovatively about \ndeveloping earned income strategies. And so that was interesting. And \nthe idea was, how do we develop financial independence from state and \ncity and private foundation support, how do we become independent of \nthose things and still do the work? So long-term sustainability. So we \nwere thinking \u2013 so that was the purpose of that, to spur us to think \ncreatively about how do we fund our agencies, and I\u2019m really grateful \nthat I participated in that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I\u2019m looking and I\u2019m like oh, gosh, we have all these people\nthat we can\u2019t get jobs because these employers are not willing to hire them for\na variety of reasons, some legit, some not so. I need to think about long-term\nsustainability strategies and how to develop earned income opportunities, and\nso it was at the intersection of those two needs, or opportunities, that I\nstarted thinking about a business and how \u2013 it was clear that the employers\nweren\u2019t willing to hire so that only supported this concept of me thinking\nabout launching a business that would help to sustain the need that we had from\nour clients but also could be a revenue source to support the nonprofit\nlong-term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>So Brenda and her board began the long \nprocess of thinking through how they could actually create such a \nbusiness. They started brainstorming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda: <\/strong>So that was sort of the rough of it. Then as\n we started to get closer to the work, me and my board, we started \nlooking at a variety of different ideas, and this is where I kind of \nshare that \u2013 I laugh and realize there were lots of really really bad \nideas. And there really were, lots of bad ideas. And there wasn\u2019t \nanything that was going to give us a unique competitive advantage. And \nin a business, you have to have your \u2013 what is your competitive \nadvantage, what is unique about your product that\u2019s going to draw people\n to it? And support it? So that was a big deal, and when I ran out of \nideas and was really at the end of my rope, I just thought \u2013 I was close\n to giving up. And then one of my board members, her name was Donna \nDucharme, she said, you know what Brenda, I don\u2019t know but maybe we \nshould think about beekeeping. And I\u2019m like what? And she\u2019s like well, I\n have some friends that are beekeepers. I\u2019m like well what does it take?\n She goes I don\u2019t know, but let\u2019s meet with them for lunch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we did, and what resonated for me out of that conversation with\nthose beekeepers was, beekeeping is a hobby, or even a profession that\u2019s passed\non through storytelling. That was it. That was it! I just thought, wow. So no\nmatter what a person\u2019s academic attainment or challenges, people could learn\nthe art and the science of beekeeping, no matter what. And I thought that\ndegree of success was gonna be really important. People needed to feel that\nthey could be successful. Because pausing parenthetically, prison is all about\nstripping a person of their self-worth. You\u2019ve heard me say this before. It\u2019s\nsomeone that like, Elaine Austin who works here, she says, I got my name back.\nI am Elaine Austin. And I think that when a person is released from prison,\nthey have a huge journey that involves restoring their sense of self-worth. So\nbeing associated with something in nature that is soft and good but can sting,\nslows a person down in a way that\u2019s really important. It makes you reflective.\nIt also makes you appreciate nature, that something as small as a honeybee can\nproduce something that is sweet and good and consumable by humans. It just\nslows you down. So it was just lovely that we could actually help people through\nbeekeeping, get jobs \u2013 well, jobs, have work experience is what we were trying\nto do.&nbsp; And the Illinois Department of\nCorrections signed up and said yes, we would be more than happy to give you\nsome seed funding. They had some money left over from one of their prison\nprojects, and gave us $130,000, $140,000 to start, and then the city came in\nwith $100,000, also to help with transitional jobs support, and we bought bees,\ndeveloped our business plan, and we were off and rolling and established the\nfirst apiary in the spring of 2004. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice: <\/strong>As for the name Sweet Beginnings, Brenda says\n that emerged organically from a conversation with a friend. Many people\n had been skeptical about her idea, and Brenda thought she might get a \nsimilar response. Instead, after she finished describing her idea, her \nfriend paused and said, \u201cWell, what a sweet beginning for those people.\u201d\n And the name stuck. After Brenda got Sweet Beginnings up and running, \nshe continued to develop the product itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda: <\/strong>Once we finally had our first harvest of \nlocal honey, we took it to farmers markets, and it was scary. Because I \njust didn\u2019t know if people would feel comfortable purchasing honey \nand\/or honey that was assembled and jarred by people with criminal \nrecords, again because of that strong social stigma associated with \ncriminal records. And so what was interesting is that the folks at the \nfarmers markets really didn\u2019t care about who had produced it, but that \nit was delicious. That it was local was even better, and then eventually\n it would be interesting because the story might come out, well tell me,\n where did the honey come from? And so with the questions from our \ncustomers became stories about these individuals who had served time, \nand it was just really cool. I was worried again that people might not \nwant to try the product, because I\u2019ve seen other social enterprises that\n worked with like the homeless or in Denver, there was a \u2013 they\u2019re very \npopular now \u2013 but it was called the Women\u2019s Bean Project, and people \nwould refuse to buy their soup because they were assembled by homeless \nwomen and they were like, mm, it just visually didn\u2019t work for people. \nThat was twenty years ago. But now they\u2019re one of the best social \nenterprises in the country. But I was worried. And for no reason, \nbecause I realized that people really cared about the quality of the \nproduct versus who made it. And so we downplayed, early on, who made it,\n and really focused on the quality of the product, because we wanted to \nhave repeat business. We didn\u2019t want people to like us because of our \nsocial mission, we wanted people to like us because our products were \ngood or the honey was good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then we realized that honey\u2019s profit margins are so thin, 13%,\nthat that was not gonna make a sustainable business and so we had to then think\nabout what could we do to expand our profit margins and improve the long-term\nsustainability of the business and make it more profitable? So the board and I,\nwe looked at different things, we really looked at some bizarre things, like\nhoney as a preservative is something that, like a fruit preservative, that was\na big idea and I kept thinking no, that is not gonna work. But then we\neventually landed on skincare. And at that time, natural skincare was not that\npopular either. But people again loved our products. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> Fifteen years later, a lot about Sweet \nBeginnings has changed, but the fundamentals remain the same. We still \nmake those products \u2013 the lotion, the body cream, the lip balm, and more\n \u2013 and the revenue from those products has provided transitional jobs \nfor our clients. Last year, we hired our 500<sup>th<\/sup> transitional employee. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brenda:<\/strong> The purpose of Sweet Beginnings was really \nto help establish a work history for a person who\u2019s been incarcerated \nand out of the labor market. It was designed to help people become \nacclimated to the culture and discipline of work. Really, work ethic. So\n they could show up every day on time, clocking in, and they could learn\n how to reengage and address issues around supervision and anger, \nbecause prison is a place where there\u2019s a lot of anger and animosity \ntoward guards and whatnot. And so people would treat employers as they \nwould treat their relationship with guards. And we had to change that. \nAnd Sweet Beginnings does that without a person losing their job. So I \noften say that Sweet Beginnings helps our employees unlearn what made \nthem a successful inmate. So they can become successful employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alice:<\/strong> We\u2019ve covered a lot in this episode: how NLEN\n began as a community-driven effort initiated by the Steans Family \nFoundation, how Brenda realized that NLEN needed to create jobs in \naddition to training people for them, and how she came up with the idea \nfor Sweet Beginnings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please get in touch if you have questions or comments! By filling\nout the interest form on the podcast landing page, you can submit a question\nyou\u2019d like us to address, or send us a note about what brings you here. We\u2019d\nlove to hear about your vision for change. Thanks for listening, and see you\nnext time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you searching for an innovative and sustainable way to carry out your social mission? 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