home >> what we do >> program advocacy >> delancey street

Program Advocacy

Delancey Street

SURJ Board Member, the Honorable Joseph DiPinto has made it a goal to bring the highly successful and well-regarded Delancey Street Program to Delaware. As a State Representative, he was influential in working with the Department of Correction to allow a few men serving probation sentences to serve their time in a Delancey Street program based out New York. It has been reported that these men have done exceedingly well in this program.

Now DiPinto wants to bring Delancey Street to Delaware. This program, started in San Francisco, is a successful rehabilitation program, and now operates in five locations in four states. Operating out of the premise of "each one, teach one" the organization has no paid employees. Each person who joins the Delancey Street program commits to lending their talents to the program’s disparate industries. Among these are a moving company, furniture making and a gourmet restaurant. As the men and women move through the program they teach what they have learned to those who have more recently entered.

This program has an incredible success rate, and it operates with no cost to taxpayers. Countless men and women have turned their lives around because of this program. SURJ would like to see this program to Delaware, and has included this goal on our 2009-2011 Agenda for Action.