Two things Salem has in abundance: released prisoners needing better skills for productive living and wasted, idle land at an airport. Add the world's desperate need to restore pollinator populations, a dash of creativity and willingness to try something new and we could have something great! Definitely an idea to steal!
The sweet smell of success is in the air at O'Hare International Airport with an unusual collaboration aimed at giving honeybees and their keepers a second chance.
Twenty-three beehives were installed on a vacant piece of property on the airport's east side this spring.
Tending to the hives are carefully screened former convicts enrolled with the nonprofit North Lawndale Employment Network.
The idea is “to create jobs for people who have a difficult time finding them,” said Brenda Palms Barber, executive director of NLEN and CEO of Sweet Beginnings. “There's a stigma and fear about hiring people who've served time in prison.”
Out of this problem grew Sweet Beginnings, an urban honey enterprise that employs people who have served time. Some work as beekeepers, others as landscapers or food processors.
“Bees don't distinguish between weeds and flowers,” Palms Barber said. “They see it all as a source of food and turn whatever they draw from into something sweet and good. That's what we do with these men and women. There is good in them as well.” . . .
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