prepared by: Susan Chen
updated: 03/09/2008

Website: www.delanceystreetfoundation.org

Mission:
The Delancey Street Foundation is a residential education center where drug addicts, criminals and the homeless learn to lead productive, crime-free lives. It has been called the most successful rehabilitation project in the United States.

Inspiration/History:
Delancey Street is considered a pioneer of social entrepreneurship development in America. In 1971 Mimi Silbert founded Delancey Street with four residents, a thousand dollar loan and a dream. She envisioned a place where substance abusers, former felons and others who had hit bottom would, through their own efforts and empowerment, be able to turn their lives around. Silbert has since built an empire grossing 20 million dollars a year with locations in New York, New Mexico, North Carolina and Los Angeles.

Business Model:
Rather than following a medical model, Delancey Street has developed an educational model to solve social problems. It teaches people to find and develop their strengths rather than only focus on their problems. Delancey Street is a learning center in which residents learn and teach academics, vocational skills, and personal, interpersonal, practical and social survival skills.

Theory of Change:
Delancey Street is grounded on the belief that people can change, can learn to live drug free, crime free lives of purpose and integrity. It functions as an extended family, a community in which every member helps the others with no staff of experts, no “program approach”. Everyone is both a giver and a receiver in an “each-one-teach-one” process. Delancey Street stresses work ethic, personal and social responsibility, integrity and caring for others.

Core Programs:
Delancey Street takes applications from people who have hit bottom, from prison, or walk-ins. Residents who have been at Delancey Street for a while interview all applicants. The minimum stay is 2 years; the average stay is 4 years. Delancey has 3 rules: no drugs or alcohol, no physical violence, and no threats of violence. The goal is to learn to lead a productive crime-free, drug-free life of purpose and integrity.

First, residents are taught personal skills: how to break old habits, how to get along with other people. Residents learn about basic hygiene and basic work habits. When ready, residents enter one of the vocational training schools – where with training from more experienced residents, they start at the bottom and work their way up.

Since 1972, Delancey Street has created 12 successful ventures. These include:
* Crossroads Café, Bookstore & Art Gallery
* Catering & Event Planning
* Delancey Coach (Corporate Private Car Service)
* Digital Print Shop
* Handcrafted Furniture, Ironworks, Plants & Glass, Ceramics

Each resident at Delancey Street learns 3 marketable skills by working in the vocational training schools. These include at least one manual skill, one clerical/computer skill, and one interpersonal/sales skill. Everyone earns at least a high school equivalency degree. Advanced education is available.

Recent Developments (if applicable):
Accomplishments thus far:

• Over 10,000 formerly illiterate people have received high school equivalency degrees
• Over 1000 have graduated with a diploma from our state accredited post-secondary vocational three year program taught by its own residents.
• 50 students have received an accredited BA either in Human Relations through Golden Gate University or Urban Studies through San Francisco State University.
• All eligible students (over 70) have graduated from the nine-year-old charter public high school for juvenile justice youths, 50% of whom have gone on to college; and 42% into career jobs. This is remarkable considering that 90% entered the school as dropouts.

New Initiative:
The Delancey CIRCLE - Coalition to Implement Revitalized Communities, Lives, Education and Economies – is a new effort to respond to the growing crisis of the most intractable social problems occurring in the world today: poverty and growing underclass populations, crime, substance abuse, homelessness, child abuse, violence, and the attendant hopelessness that pervades the people who live with these problems. Delancey has received over 10,000 requests to teach its model to others.

Biography of Founder, Mimi Silbert:
Mimi Silbert serves as the President, Chairman of the Board, and CEO of the Delancey Street Foundation. Although Delancey Street is her primary work, Silbert is also a recognized national expert in criminal justice. She has designed adult and juvenile corrections master plans for numerous cities and states, evaluated the prison system for California Department of Corrections, and designed and conducted the largest study in the country on Prostitution and Sexual Assault.
As a result of her pioneering work, Silbert has received numerous awards including 9 honorary doctorate degrees from several universities. She has been honored by police, professional, and community groups as well as national awards ranging from America’s Award, Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award, The National Caring Award, The Pope John XXIII Award, and The National Common Cause’s Public Service Achievement Award, along with many awards from Presidents Bush, Carter, Reagan, numerous Senate and Congressional leaders, and State Legislators.
Silbert has served on a number of Boards, such as the National Institute of Justice by President Carter, the California State Board of Corrections five times, and the State Police Commission. She has been featured on ABC’s 20/20, Oprah Winfrey Prime Time Special, Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt, Good Morning America, PBS’ New Heroes, among many others. She has also been featured on many books and newspapers.
Silbert has two sons, David and Greg Silbert. Silbert holds a bachelors degree in English from the University of Massachusetts (1963) and Masters (1965) and Doctoral Degrees (1968) in Counseling Psychology and Criminology from the University of California at Berkeley, from whom she was awarded UC Berkeley’s Prestigious Alumni of the Year award (1991), along with being named one of 100 Berkeley Fellows (2003). Mimi Silbert has lived with the belief that it is possible to transform impossible dreams into reality by poolingresources, supporting one another, and lead lives of purpose and integrity.

Questions to be Raised During Visit (3-4):

1. How are you funded?
2. What are some major challenges you have faced over the years?
3. What do you mean by Delancey working from the outside in?
4. What do you feel about drug legalization and the government’ “War on Drugs”?

Further Resources (2-3):

• http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/qt/crime_sm.mov
• http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/pdf/2007/crimjustbook.pdf
• http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/pdf/1992/drugfree_excerpt.pdf