Bee the difference by Stephanie Kirchstetter

Bee the difference

by Stephanie Kirchstetter

If you ask people “Would you do anything for your friends and family?”, nobody will deny that they would. When growing up in a bad neighborhood and drifting to the wrong side of life, people sometimes make bad choices, which often result in prison time. These choices then give them a criminal record, which makes it almost impossible for them to be re-employed. This is where social justice organizations step in, because U.S. government does not, to help these formerly incarcerated individuals to reintegrate both socially and professionally. 

One of these organizations is the North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN), which supports the North Lawndale residents to meet their unmet unemployment needs. Each individual does not only have the opportunity to receive training in anger management and employment, but they also receive help during the period they try to apply for a job. 

A study of the company found that 57% of the adults in this area are either involved in criminal actions, served time in prison or are on probation.

Therefore the company introduced a program called the ‘U-Turn-Permitted-Program’, in which participants can change their direction and re-start the engine of life. The motto of it is ‘Once someone served their time in prison, they’ve served their time!’ Meaning that program participants will not be judged by their past mistakes, once they completed their punishment, but on their current performance.

However, the NLEN goes even further than that: In 2004 the organization helped Brenda Palms-Barber launch a new company called Sweet Beginnings, LLC, which gives its employees the opportunity to gain work experience by working in a full-time transitional job at a ‘bee-farm’. The participants will take care of the bees and hives, harvest honey and make the ‘beelove’ products, such as honey and the newly introduced skin care line. It was proven that through this 90-days-training the recidivism rate of the team members decreases from 55 %, which is the average in the state of Illinois, to below 10%.

If you ask Brenda, why she is doing what she does, one can see her watery eyes when she speaks about her passion. Before she founded Sweet Beginnings, LLC and was only working for the North Lawndale Employment Network, she tried to find jobs for her clients. She often got the same response from employers: Not now, come ask again in two weeks and so on and so forth. Therefore, she decided she had to do something to help these people, because everyone can make mistakes – small or big. So after she recognized the problem, she came up with some ideas, the final one being working with bees, because ‘they are the only animals that create food for the humanity just because of their existence.’ Some people might have not taken the idea too serious in the beginning, but as Brenda says ‘If you have a dream and nobody is laughing about it, you have not dreamed big enough!’

Now they are even selling their honey in eleven Whole Foods and a couple of Mariano’s retail stores all around Chicago. 

So how did Sweet Beginnings, LLC get that far? How did they finally succeed in earning profit last year? Not only due to Brenda’s dream and passion the business did succeed, but due to her being a great leader, which is a title she does not give herself. But Brenda has it all – she is called the ‘Queen-Bee’ at her company:

• A strong conviction, which motivates her, that she can change something about this situation.
• A great relationship with her clients/followers, which she developed carefully.
• A great leader also needs the acceptance for fellowship.
• Awareness about the responsibility she has for her followers.
• A strong enough self-esteem to accept that someone else is better in a field and if he/she has more skills, they need to step up to the podium.
• An ability to transfer her spirit to her employees.

After the impressive meeting with the ‘Queen-Bee’, I thought to myself: How can I adapt what I’ve learned today to our project the LIB? How can I transfer Brenda’s leadership style into our management?

The two most important things that I’ve learned are that (1) your passion drives your business and (2) you should be encouraging your team to step up and embrace their skills.

(1) The LIB’s mission is it to offer a place where people from all over the world meet and feel comfortable, through our heartwarming atmosphere and unforgettable unique urban experience. It is our passion to give guests an unforgettable vacation in our hotel. In order to achieve this the hotel staff, meaning the management and each employee, has to live by that spirit. Through our passion, we have to transfer this spirit to our employees, which than execute the job in our sense.

(2) In order to have a well-functioning team, it is important to accept and recognize the skills of each employee. Even better the whole hotel staff should see itself as a team with each one of them contributing to the hotel’s success. If employees are encouraged to embrace their skills, it can only be a win-win-situation. A leader is only as good as his/her team, because he/she cannot be good at everything. A team requires specialists in different areas, which not only help to succeed, but this procedure also motivates the team through the recognition from the leader, because of their contribution.