Christina Sarich, Contributing Writer
Waking Times

Editor’s Note: After reading this, please visit the follow up to this article here.

If a system does not interact with its environment in any way. . . it does not exist in nature.

I will start this article with the definition of an isolated system: implies a system that does not interact with the other systems of its environment in any way. Now I ask: Does an isolated system exist?

A Chicago woman has built a business out of not only helping the environment, but helping to create a bright and positive future for ex-cons.

Chicago, IL – Brenda Palms-Barber has created a unique program that accomplishes two noble goals—helping troubled honeybee populations and helping ex-cons stay out of jail.

Sweet Beginnings, located in Chicago’s West Side, is a social enterprise business that turns former prisoners into beekeepers. This interaction with some of our most important friends in the natural world has a striking success rate.

According to FUSION:

“Graduates of the program have a recidivism rate of only 4%, compared with the national average of 40% and the state average of 55%. Unlike many other social enterprises, Sweet Beginnings is also profitable, bringing in a tidy $9,000 last year.”

History has been made! Last Saturday in Saudi Arabia, twenty women were elected to public office in a landmark election.

This was the first time women were allowed to vote, as well as the first time they were allowed to run for local municipal council seats. In total, 131,000 registered females showed up at the polling place to participate (in contrast to 1.4 million men).

Because Saudi women are still not allowed to drive, the female voters had to either rely on men to drive them to the polls or Uber. The transportation app offered a free ride to any ladies who needed to cast their votes on the big day.

Source: www.themindunleashed.org | Original Post Date: November 9, 2015 –

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then you hear a story about people overcoming all odds to help others and it completely changes your perspective of the world.

Two Chinese men, 53-year-old Jia Wenqi and 54-year-old Jia Haixia, have been doing something amazing for the last 13 years. They have planted more than 10,000 trees around Yeli Village in northeastern China, a region which once was covered in nothing but rocks and weeds. But what is really stunning about this story is that both friends have severe physical disabilities – Haixa is completely blind and Wenqi is a double amputee with no arms. Yet, it did not prevent them from accomplishing their mission.

Haixia was born with congenital cataracts which left his left eye blind. In 2000, he lost sight in his other eye after a work accident. Wenqi had a tragic accident at the age of three years old, as a result of which he lost both of his arms.