A Movement to Transform Coal Miners Into Beekeepers Is Great News for the Planet

Tucked inside an old gymnasium, hundreds of wooden boxes are stacked along a far wall. The space, formerly home base for a summer camp, is now host to labs and classrooms filled with bright, freshly painted blue boxes.
But children won’t be playing here this summer. Instead, among the boxes and stainless steel vats, displaced coal miners and low-income West Virginians will learn a new trade — beekeeping. It’s part of a program run by the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective, a program for low-income West Virginians to make supplemental income through beekeeping.
While beekeeping may seem like an odd choice for former coal miners, it’s a viable and increasingly popular way for people in rural areas to make money. In West Virginia, where poverty is high and jobs are scarce, a large part of the population is struggling to make ends meet.
Coal mining once bolstered the region, but between 2005 and 2015, employment in the coal industry decreased by about 27 percent, according to research by West Virginia University. Across the nation, states like Kentucky, Wyoming and Pennsylvania have to find jobs to fill the employment gap left by the coal industry.
Enter the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective. The collective operates across 17 counties in southern West Virginia and offers classes in subjects like, Is Beekeeping Right for Me?, bee basics and advanced beekeeping. It’s a branch of the Appalachian Headwaters, a nonprofit formed to develop sustainable economic opportunities across the region.
Interested beekeepers can take Beekeeping 101, which is a five-week course where they learn the basics of beekeeping, bee biology and solutions to common problems. Once the new beekeeper has completed this course, he or she can become a partner in the collective. The partnership offers training, mentorship, equipment and bees for free or at a reduced cost.

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Here a honey bee forages on clover.

But the startup cost to becoming a beekeeper can be a barrier of entry.
This was the case for Jason Young, a resident of White Oak, West Virginia.
Young originally started beekeeping as a hobby but quickly realized it could turn into a small business. “We had decided that we wanted to move forward,” he says. “But it was really the money that was holding us back.”
When Young discovered the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective offered training and equipment at low cost, he leapt at the opportunity.
Young and his daughter enrolled in the free Beekeeping 101 course and received 12 hives from the collective for a reduced price. From there, he formed White Oak Bee Co.
Last spring was their first harvest. It produced enough honey for his family and his honey-roasted coffee, which is White Oak Bee Co.’s signature item. This season, however, he has 14 hives ready to harvest and hopes to make a profit that he can reinvest in the business.
“Beekeeping and our relationship with the collective has really made that possible,” Young says.
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Beekeepers examine a frame of mature honey.

The Appalachian Beekeeping Collective successfully trained 35 beekeepers this past year and plans to train another 55 this spring.
When it’s harvest time, the nonprofit will process, market and distribute the honey for its beekeepers for free. That can result in a nice chunk of change. In 2018, the market value for a pound of honey was about $7.33. A single hive can produce 20 to 100 pounds of honey a year, which means a single productive hive could earn its owner over $700 a year. With multiple hives, a beekeeper has the potential to make thousands of dollars every year.
And the bees do more than produce income for their owners. The forests provide nectar for the bees, and in turn, the bees pollinate these key natural habitats and create more plant diversity, says Parry Kietzman, an entomologist and educator at the collective.
Kietzman says she’s noticed people are more aware of the land and plants once they have bees.
“It seems to give people more of a handle on environmental concerns,” she says. “Simply because they’re worried about their bees.”
For others, like Young, it’s a chance to accomplish goals.
“What I feel most thankful for is the opportunity to take some dreams we’ve had for a really long time,” Young said. “And to really see them, kind of, come to be.”

Providence Restaurant Serves Up Second Chances

Jeff Bacon has worked in kitchens his entire life, but it was only after a brush with the law that he realized food could change lives. “I ended up mixed up with drugs and alcohol, running with a wild crowd, losing job after job … I was great at what I did, but I wasn’t a very good person,” Bacon says.
After serving two years in prison for drug possession and resisting arrest, Bacon says he experienced a spiritual awakening. “I firmly, firmly heard from God, ‘This is not what you’re supposed to be doing with your life. You need to do something more, and you need to give back the second chance that you got.’”
Bacon wanted to use his passion for food to give back to the community of Winston-Salem, N.C., where one in seven people struggles with hunger. After years of pitching the idea of a culinary training school, Bacon was finally able to launch Providence Culinary Training Program through a partnership with the Second Harvest Food Bank.
The program trains people in all aspects of food service, and students prepare meals for local community members in need. “It’s not the food scarcity and the food insecurity, though that is a crushing and urgent and acute problem… but it’s the root causes,” says Bacon. “[It’s] the root causes of poverty, the inequalities of our society — we’re not just ill-prepared to deal with them, we’re ill-prepared to even discuss them intelligently.”
Through the Providence program, students receive 12 weeks of culinary training, as well as connections in the food industry and opportunities for long-term internships and jobs. Many of the participants enter the program facing obstacles to stable employment, such as a criminal background or a lack of higher education. But after completing their training, 87 percent of graduates retain steady employment one year later.
Watch the video above to learn more about the Providence program and meet some of the people who have turned their lives around through it.
MORE: Would Your Opinion of Criminals Change If One Cooked and Served You Dinner?

Fighting Poverty With Jobs

We all seek meaning in the work we do, but what if you’re struggling to find a job in the first place? For some, that means turning to America Works. Called a “company with a conscience,” this employment agency offers a network of work-readiness and job-placement programs to clients including veterans, people with disabilities, the formerly incarcerated and the homeless. Their mission: to help lift people from all backgrounds out of poverty, by giving them the skills they need to support themselves.
Since it was founded in 1984, America Works has helped more than 700,000 people find, and keep, meaningful employment. Here are some of their stories.

A FIRST OPPORTUNITY

When Jaquell Langley showed up at the America Works office in the Bronx last April, he was dressed for success in a full suit.
“His motivation was already there,” says Abigail Kelly, a program manager at America Works of New York (AWNY). “We didn’t have to teach it.”
The 24-year-old was eager to land a job, yet a significant speech impediment and slight cognitive delay meant Langley was struggling to get noticed by potential employers.
Still, he was determined. Each day, when the America Works office opened at 8:30 a.m., there was Langley, suited up and waiting outside the front door. He immersed himself in employment skills workshops and sat through mock interviews. Realizing Langley found it harder to speak when he was nervous, the staff worked on upping his confidence — chatting him up in the halls and encouraging him to perform in a poetry slam.
When Langley first interviewed for a part-time greeter position with a pharmacy chain, he didn’t get the gig. “But he didn’t mope,” says Kelly. “He kept showing up to our office, ready to work.”
AWNY staff arranged for Langley to re-interview for the greeter position a few weeks later, and this time, he was hired.
“We ring a bell in our office when someone gets a job, and Jaquell ran to ring it,” Kelly says. “He made the rounds, shaking hands and giving high fives like the mayor.”
Langley has since been promoted to full-time cashier and is saving money for his first apartment.
“Too many in life take the easy way out, refusing to even try to push themselves,” says Kelly. “Jaquell chose a different path, and pushed to have as normal a life as he could.”

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America Works helped Jaquell Langley find work as a greeter at a pharmacy chain.

A SECOND ACT

30 years. That’s how long Marvin Daniel worked as an operations manager in the banking industry. Yet last year, when his company decided to move out of New York State, Daniel found himself out of work.
The good news was that Daniel, 59, had glowing references and a solid resume. “The only thing holding him back was a lack of opportunity,” says Sami Martin, his career advisor at AWNY.
Martin enrolled Daniel in classes to get him up to speed on commonly used computer programs and website design. She arranged for him to meet with America Works’ career agents, who have connections to companies looking to hire, and encouraged Daniel to pursue leadership training.
Within a few months, Daniel landed a position at a bank. He’s about to celebrate his one-year anniversary.
“I love being a person’s cheerleader,” says Martin. Of the three years she’s been at America Works, she says, “I couldn’t tell you how many clients I have helped, but I can say that they’ve all been special to me.”

A CHANCE TO START OVER

At first, Melvin Taylor was reluctant to visit America Works. In other employment programs, he’d faced rejection due to his criminal background. But a few months earlier, he’d lost his job due to alcohol abuse and had found himself living in a homeless shelter.
When a public assistance agency referred the older gentleman to America Works’ Staten Island office, his desire to find a job led him to show up.
Kaitlyn Squire, a career advisor for AWNY, helped Taylor get some professional clothes, revamp his resume and hone his interview skills.
“From the get-go I really clicked with him,” she says. “Melvin has such a genuine personality and a smile that touched my heart.”
Taylor told Squire that he would work in any field, just so long as someone would take a chance on him.
When a string of job interviews led nowhere, Squire had an idea. She contacted the cafe where she used to work. Her ex-manager there agreed to interview Taylor for a part-time dishwasher position.
“They loved him and hired him on the spot,” Squire says.
Fast forward a year and Taylor has graduated to a full-time position. He was recently named Employee of the Month, and came back to America Works to show Squire his certificate.
“I was just a helping hand. Melvin did his own work,” says Squire. “Our program is not a fix-all, but clients who really take what we offer and apply it can do amazing things.”

This post was produced in partnership with the NationSwell Council, a membership community of service-minded leaders committed to moving America forward. To learn more about the Council, its members and signature events, click here.

A Second Chance at the American Dream

“There are only three ways to create wealth: You either make it, you mine it or you grow it,” says Robert Trouskie, director of field services for the Workforce Development Institute, a New York nonprofit focused on growing and retaining well-paying jobs in the state. “The one that’s really lagged behind in the last two or three decades has been the making of things, but I think the pendulum is starting to [swing].”
Indeed, the U.S. saw about 5 million manufacturing jobs disappear between 2000 and 2014. But despite the loss, 400,000 positions still sit unfilled across the country. Most are for jobs that require special training — a need WDI has been addressing since 2003 by working with other organizations and unions to connect willing workers to available positions.
One such worker is Todd Holmquist, a recent graduate of WDI’s Accelerated Machinist Partnership, which combines classroom education with hands-on training in factories. After the aircraft plant where he worked closed in 2013, Holmquist’s income plummeted from about $80,000 a year to $20,000. He enrolled in the program just a week before his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Watch the video above to see how WDI helped turned Holmquist’s life, and employment prospects, around.

A Food Truck Run by Former Inmates Charts a New Course

Since 2014 the New York City–based Drive Change has been operating a food truck, called Snowday, as a way of reducing recidivism rates among young people. The organization hires and mentors formerly jailed young adults between the ages of 18 and 25. And so far, it has ushered more than 20 of them through its paid fellowship program, which provides both specific training in the culinary arts as well as broader professional-development skills. Graduates of the program have gone on to work as line cooks in upscale restaurants and catering companies.
Now Drive Change is ready to scale its operations for greater impact as other cities, including Baltimore and Pittsburgh, have expressed interest in launching similar programs. With a commissary set to open in 2018, Drive Change hopes to increase the number of fellows from roughly eight a year to 40.
Also on the menu for the nonprofit: a re-branding and a new look. Beginning in July, the award-winning Snowday will be called Drive Change, though it will still feature a seasonal menu with locally sourced food. In addition, the company is adopting an affiliate model where other food trucks that hire young adults coming home from prison can get Drive Change–Certified.
Founded by 31-year-old Jordyn Lexton, Snowday was originally conceived as the first in a fleet of food trucks. But the re-branding was necessary, Lexton says, because marketing different trucks while still promoting the organization’s social-impact mission proved too resource-intensive.
“We were constantly trying to figure out how to put our resources behind one brand versus the other,” says Lexton. “We recognized it caused more confusion than we had originally envisioned.” There was also a concern that Drive Change could be perceived as exploiting the very group of people it aims to help, adds Lexton. “We’ve been able to have young people we work with take ownership of our mission and what we stand for, and that’ll be forefront in our [new] brand identity.”
As Drive Change transitions, it is only accepting event bookings from organizations working directly in the field of social or racial justice, including re-entry from the criminal justice system. Says Lexton, “We’re really trying to raise awareness around those issues so change can happen.”
Homepage photo via Drive Change.
Continue reading “A Food Truck Run by Former Inmates Charts a New Course”

How Running Got 6,000 Homeless People Back on Their Feet

Hector Torres’s world was shattered when he learned his 29-year-old son had died. The former Marine and avid runner was driving home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. The loss sent Hector into a grief spiral as he abandoned his life as a truck driver in Connecticut to wander the streets of New York City without a home.
“In the process of losing my son, I lost reality,” Torres says. “For about a month, I was wandering the city not knowing where I was at.”
Ten months later, Torres began to piece his life back together. While residing in the New York City Rescue Mission, Torres became a member of Back on My Feet, a nonprofit that combats homelessness through running programs. Founded in 2007, the organization works with shelters in 12 cities nationwide to recruit members interested in changing their lives for the better. Teams meet three times a week at 5:45 a.m., and members who maintain at least a 90 percent attendance record for the first 30 days become eligible for job training, financial aid and other life-building opportunities.
“Nobody runs alone,” says executive director Terence Gerchberg. “The point of this group is not to outrun somebody; it’s to uplift somebody. It’s meeting people where they are.”
Watch the video above to see how running transformed Torres’s life.

Working Their Way to Independence

On a recent Monday afternoon, in an office tower in Manhattan, Judy Matthews sat around a table with three other domestic violence victims and talked about her résumé. Through a nonprofit, she’d recently taken a Microsoft Word course for the formatting, but Matthews, a black, middle-aged mother from Brooklyn, was worried about the content. The problem? A 10-year gap, the result of pressure from her abuser to drop out of the workforce.
“For the past decade, I spent most of my time near the window, while my husband went to work,” says Matthews. “I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t have a career. I completed my degrees and I put them in a box. I didn’t know who I was, other than who [my husband] told me I was, which was a woman who’s got nothing to offer. It was a sense of: ‘Why did you even waste time going to school?’ That’s why I spent my time at the window, watching everybody else walk their kids to school, go to work, do everything they need to do.”
About a year and a half ago, Matthews (whose name, like other survivors quoted in this story, has been changed) packed a few belongings into a plastic Marshall’s bag and made her way to Sanctuary for Families, New York’s largest nonprofit for victims of domestic abuse, sex trafficking and other gender-based violence. There, she enrolled in the Economic Empowerment Program (EEP), a workforce-development program to help survivors regain the self-sufficiency and financial independence they lost during an abusive relationship. Today, Matthews, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who was once too scared to take the subway, has an internship with the city’s Human Resources Administration, which distributes public assistance.
Founded in 2011, EEP’s 15-week program prepares survivors for entry-level openings in fields with potential for significant career growth. During the first two weeks, sessions focus on workplace readiness: punctuality, email etiquette and proper attire, for example. But the bulk of EEP’s training focuses on math, literature and computer programs. Throughout, the women revise their résumés and practice mock job interviews.
“We don’t want them working in fast food or at a clothing chain. Not that those aren’t honorable work, but it can’t get a person off public assistance,” says Judy Harris Kluger, who was a New York State judge for 25 years before becoming Sanctuary’s executive director in 2014. After EEP, she says, “I hope they’re in a position to support their children; to live on their own in an apartment, not a shelter; and to find healthy relationships and people who care about them.”
Nationally, an estimated one in four women and one in seven men will experience serious violence at a partner’s hands. Within New York City, police responded to 279,051 domestic violence incidents in 2015 — roughly 32 calls every hour. For each of these victims, an intimate link binds her checkbook to the risk of abuse by her partner. When a couple’s finances are strained, the chance of violence triples. An abuser who can’t find work for months may lash out at his spouse, the one aspect of his life he can ruthlessly control. The victim, meanwhile, her bank account depleted, can’t afford to stay at a motel for a few nights, much less pay for her children’s basic needs or see a psychiatrist or divorce lawyer. Money, in other words, can force victims to stay with their abusers.

EEP participants attend classes in math, literature and computer skills, and receive guidance on resume-writing and office culture.

And when battered women do work, holding down a job is a constant struggle. In one survey, nearly two-thirds of victims said abuse interfered with their work performance. Of that group, two-fifths were harassed by a partner’s phone calls or in-person stalking. For others, the difficulty started before they even left home. To disrupt a victim’s schedule, an abuser might deprive her of sleep, unplug the alarm clock, hide clothes or car keys, refuse to babysit the kids, cut and bruise her or physically bar the doorway. Distracted or depressed, these survivors showed up late or not at all; one study showed these women earn less as a whole.
Faced with these challenges, how does EEP perform? In its five years of operation, 564 survivors enrolled in the program, and nearly all of them — 88 percent — completed it. By the end, two-thirds of the graduates land internships or jobs. A year later, at least 65 percent of those alumnae report keeping the position. EEP aims to place enrollees in fields such as workplace administration, construction management and medical billing. On average, EEP graduates are paid $13.71 an hour, well above New York’s $8.75 minimum wage.
Angelo J. Rivera, EEP’s director, believes the model works because it establishes a clear path off welfare. When a person starts the program, Rivera’s team sits down with a chart of seven “keys,” which demonstrate career readiness and includes benchmarks like reaching a 10th-grade reading level, earning a high school diploma or GED, and gaining intermediate computer skills and prior work experience. (On average, participants enter with only three or four of these skill sets.)
To start meeting the seven keys, EEP readies survivors for office culture, beginning with how they dress. At the program’s start, each class heads to Macy’s to pick out a suit and two blouses, which they’re required to wear to class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dressing professionally — or in other words, putting on the appearance of success — is an important first step in the transition to the business world, explains Sarah Hayes, EEP’s deputy director. “A number are homeless and living in shelters. They’ve had to leave their possessions behind to flee an abusive situation,” she says. “Being able to put on a suit is dignifying. They don’t feel like they’re different from anyone else traipsing around Wall Street. It’s a powerful anonymity that you get to wear, and it helps you envision yourself as the professional that you want to be.”
Once they look the part, the women in EEP run through a crash course in sophistication, in part by catching up on well-known literature. Under Rivera, the reading list is a guide to power relations: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Animal Farm” and writings by James Baldwin. The group also recently toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, many for the first time.
Though EEP’s classes avoid discussions of the women’s abusive relationships — a marked shift from other social programs that deal with trauma through support groups — counseling and other services are available at Sanctuary. Immigrants who need work authorization can seek remedies from the legal team, for example, and someone facing an eviction can receive emergency monetary assistance and defense in housing court.
But there’s another reason why EEP so clearly divides its efforts from the rest of Sanctuary’s services. Below the surface, EEP’s architects have an ambitious plan: To see their workforce-development program applied to other demographics, like foster youth, single mothers in public housing and the formerly incarcerated. The victims of gender-based violence that Rivera sees regularly come in believing they are worthless, after hearing it repeatedly from their abusers. The 15-week program works to reverse that by convincing battered women they’re worth a decent salary and empowering them to work their way to independence. The question for Rivera and his cohorts now is whether the EEP model can uplift other struggling populations toiling under their own trying circumstances.
If you are experiencing physical violence, emotional abuse or financial control at home, you can call 800-621-HOPE in New York City, 877-384-3578 in San Francisco or 800-799-7233 for all other locations.

Here Are Your 2016 Inherent Prize Finalists

One of these movers and shakers will be awarded with the Inherent Prize in recognition of their social entrepreneurship. The grand-prize winner receives $50,000, with the runner-up nabbing $25,000. Get to know more about each below, and check back after November 15th to read about the winner.
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How This Company Is Using Gaming To Teach Job Skills

It’s a common belief that young people play too many video games. Interestingly, one company thinks it’s found a way to tap that love of gaming to fight youth unemployment.
Cognotion founders Jonathon Dariyanani and Joanna Schneier knew something must be done to combat employee apathy and unemployment. Their unique solution? A series of software programs that combats employee turnover through the use of interactive games and simulation trials. The software teaches the hard skills required for the job, but also soft skills, such as how to convey empathy to annoyed customers or to analyze situational clues to solve a problem.
In 2013, 73 million youths were unemployed worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization, and in July the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 14 percent youth unemployment rate compared to 6.3 percent overall. Cognotion’s founders felt like something needed to be done.
“We really felt that after waiting for 10 years for disruption to the system, that a lot of the human potential which could be unlocked through the use of educational technology hadn’t yet [been invented],” Dariyanani tells Next City.
Right now, Cognotion has software for hotel clerks, government workers, retail cashiers and customer service representatives, and recently developed a medical game regarding the Ebola virus to train 20,000 doctors and nurses.
“We find that when we present the same industry-specific, job-specific information that’s contained in a training manual to somebody in the form of a game or with a mentor, it increases absorption, comprehension and retention,” Dariyanani explains to Next City. “We believe these sorts of products provide trackable, actionable and immediate educational benefits, so you’re meeting the learner where they are.”
MORE: The Program Giving Workers Without College Degrees a Leg Up

The Program Giving Workers Without College Degrees a Leg Up

For Americans that have completed higher education, figuring out which skills to acquire is less of a concern when it comes to applying for a job. But for workers without a college degree, the roadmap to getting hired is a bit trickier.
That’s a narrative underscoring the growing skills gap across the country, where an estimated 4.8 million jobs were not filled in August while 9.6 million Americans remained unemployed, according to BloombergAs it becomes more apparent that higher education is not the only answer to unemployment — after all, 73 percent of U.S. jobs do not require a college degree — more companies are stepping up to help Americans find the necessary skills for these available jobs.
LearnUp, a skills training platform focused on entry-level positions in retail, goes as far as to pair potential hires with openings at companies including Gap Inc., AT&T, Office Depot and Staples. The two-year-old company provides training programs tailored to each job, helping applicants learn the specific skills needed to land a position.
“The average person has 15 to 16 jobs in their lifetime. You need something that keeps your skills relevant,” says co-founder Alexis Ringwald. “Our vision is to have training available for every job.”
Ringwald, who formerly launched and sold a software startup, frequented unemployment lines before starting LearnUp to get a better sense of the hardships of finding a job. The entrepreneur and co-founder Kenny Ma then launched the platform in 2012 in the San Francisco Bay area and has since expanded job postings across the country.
Since its inception, LearnUp discovered that spending one to two hours of training in one of its modules triples a worker’s chance of landing a position, Fast Company reports.

“Having a series of realistic situations is the most effective way to teach job skills,” Ringwald says.

While not every applicant receives a job offer at the end of the process, the platform does manage to actually bridge the unskilled unemployed with companies seeking out new hires. And for many, that’s time worth spending.

MORE: Teaching Low-Income Youth These Skills May Just Solve the Tech Job Hiring Gap