Gerald Whitehead holds a comb of honey from one of the hives at Sweet Beginnings in Chicago. Sweet Beginnings, a program that offers transitional jobs for formerly incarcerated men and women to help produce a bevy of natural products from the harvested honey, including lip balm, body cream, and lotion.
The program is based in Chicago’s West side neighborhood of North Lawndale, an area where nearly three-fifths of all the area’s adults are on probation, parole or incarcerated, according to research by the North Lawndale Employment Network.
