"Here, I complete something every day and send it out to the world."

There is something really satisfying about soap (and candles too, for that matter...but this particular article is about soap.) You take a mish-mash of otherwise ordinary ingredients - lye, water, lard, olive oil - mix them together and produce something entirely new - entirely different - something that has sensuous, bubbly and/or practical uses. I think that's one of the things that makes The Enterprising Kitchen, a non-profit group in Chicago, Illinois, so successful for the women who come there to try to find a new way of life. This article from the Chicago Tribune states, "Every day inside the nondescript factory, recovering addicts, former prostitutes, victims of domestic violence and abandoned immigrant refugees cook, carve and mold batches of boutique bath products...They learn new job skills and receive training in how to find other better-paying jobs, which program directors encourage. They form friendships with co-workers in similar plights, a sort of sisterhood of soap. And they get the satisfaction of adding cleanliness to a world that, for many, has been far too dirty." Soap can bring magic and a clean slate both in and out of the bathtub.
Neat.
Read the article.