Curtis Bay is separated from the rest of Baltimore by geography, railroads and highways, but the community embodies the post-Key Bridge collapse mantra, “Baltimore strong.”

Neighbors have fought against coal dust from the CSX coal terminal and the Curtis Bay medical waste incinerator, and they are working together to tackle growing poverty and house vacancies.

It’s that sense of community that attracted Mandy Memmel, an Anne Arundel County resident who leads a women’s empowerment nonprofit and a related workforce training program and honey business in Curtis Bay.

Memmel, 54, and a former nurse, first came upon the South Baltimore neighborhood after a mission trip to Africa in the early 2000s. In 2013, she founded the mentorship nonprofit, The Well (also known as Drink at the Well), using savings from her previous career as an interior designer.

“What blew me away was I was hearing some similar stories to what I heard in Africa,” she said, “and I thought to myself, why would I be going 2,000 miles away, over the ocean, when my own city has such a high need for people to help and be a good a neighbor?”

The Well offers clothing, food, supplies and a mentorship program for women and teens. Once participants graduate from the mentorship program, they can join “the beehive” at Hon’s Honey, the workforce development for-profit project that she launched in September 2018.

It has an online shop, but Hon’s Honey Marketplace is the store’s brick-and-mortar location and coffee shop on South Hanover Street. The goods also are sold at small retailers in several states and at some Whole Foods locations.

The women who work with Memmel tend the hives and craft the company’s nine honey-based products.

“We model ourselves after the hive, including all aspects of community and working together for the next bee,” Memmel said.

What was the inspiration for starting The Well?

I started having visions of purchasing a row home here to turn into a center where women could be healed and restored through the power of community. I ended up finding a 10,000-square-foot building instead.

We purchased the building in 2013, and the organization was launched.

It went from being a mentorship program to being a life development program where we were educating women and giving them basic life skills so they could learn to sustain themselves, take care of their families and help the next woman walking through the door.

Can you tell me more about the Hon’s Honey?

I had friends who loved the work I was doing, and they offered great advice. They said, “Mandy, we think that you should start a business to employ these women so that they have a way to sustain themselves in this community.”

In 2018, I had a vision for a land flowing with milk and honey. I launched a social enterprise called Hon’s Honey with nine products in September 2018. It grew very quickly.

How does it work?

We have drop-in centers for people to get the resources they need. Women get a hot shower, meal and clothing. Then we’re able to build a relationship with them and hopefully transition them to the help they need for recovery and mental health stability.

Once they’re in recovery and mentally stable, they’re able to join our COR (Community, Opportunity and Responsibility) Life Development Program. They can build a life plan and have the financial resources, including scholarships and a car-match program.

Women who are involved in that program are eligible for free child care and housing, and they’re eligible to be employed at Hon’s Honey. The premise of it is workforce development for women who are under entry-level for work. They start as a level one, where they develop a work plan.

What’s next for Hon’s Honey?

We want to expand our beekeeping initiative. One of our women participants became a beekeeper, and we realized how trauma-healing beekeeping is. We have about eight hives, and we’re getting ready to expand that to 100 hives in the next couple of years so that we can diversify our honey sources — plus, train other beekeepers so they, too, can experience the healing.

Right now, we have 17 affectionately called “worker bees.” They’re our production specialists. Our goal is to grow that amount to as many as we can employ. And we’d like to expand to a warehouse.

Everything is made by hand. The more things that are made by hand, the more jobs we can provide. Eventually, as we grow and scale, we’ll need to automate some of our production. We just have to do that in a very careful way.

Do you have any similar ambitions for The Well?

We just got a residential house donated to us, and we’re getting ready to build a residential program where we’ll be able to house many women. It’s really only for women who don’t need a ton of management.

We’ll level them up and out of transition housing into collaborative living and into their own homes, whether it be rental or a home that’s purchased, possibly through the South Baltimore Community Land Trust.

What’s something you wish people knew about Baltimore or your organizations?

This city is incredible. I always say, you either love it or you hate it. It has a lot of challenges, but it has also some of the most resilient human beings that I’ve ever met in my life.

We need to support our local programs in Baltimore City. We need to support those of us who are in the arena, not just financially but with help through volunteering.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.