In a world where traditional leadership models are being disrupted and crises are forcing organizations to reinvent themselves, one conviction is emerging: it’s impossible to transform a company, a team, or a society without first transforming oneself.

This strong intuition is the foundation of RealChange’s approach. Through immersive learning expeditions in the heart of Silicon Valley, in contact with pioneers of social change, RealChange guides leaders, founders, managers, and decision-makers through a transformative experience. These are not just innovation tours or inspiring lectures, they are deeply human journeys into places where people live out, every day, what it means to learn, grow, find one’s place, and contribute to the world.

Among these places, the Delancey Street Foundation holds a special place. Founded in 1971 in San Francisco, this community is one of the world’s most powerful examples of human transformation through engagement, learning, and responsibility. That’s why RealChange has included Delancey in its programs for several years: because at Delancey, change isn’t talked about, it’s lived.

Delancey Street: A radical model of human reinvention

The Delancey Street Foundation is an extraordinary organization. It is neither a detox center nor a social program in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers former inmates, the homeless, addicts, and sex workers the opportunity to rebuild their lives in a self-managed community, without public funding, without paid staff, and at no cost to taxpayers.

For over fifty years, more than 23,000 people have regained their dignity, education, skills, and, most importantly, a place in society. People don’t come to Delancey to be helped; they come to contribute. Everyone learns, then teaches someone else. Everyone works, then trains the newcomer. This principle, as simple as it is revolutionary, “Each one teach one”, is the foundation of an entire ecosystem built on responsibility, solidarity, and mutual learning.

According to Dr. Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic, who studied Delancey Street graduates over a 10-year period:
‍“Delancey Street is an incredible mixture of hard practicality and idealism. It is the best and most successful program I have studied in the world.”

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Mimi Silbert: A life dedicated to social transformation

Behind this extraordinary endeavor stands a woman whose path is as impressive as it is inspiring: Mimi Silbert. Born in Massachusetts, she earned a degree in English literature from the University of Massachusetts before turning to psychology and criminology, completing her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. In the early 1970s, she chose to dedicate her skills to the most marginalized populations: ex-offenders, sex workers, and addicts. Rejecting conventional reintegration programs, often top-down or paternalistic, she founded the Delancey Street Foundation in 1971 with a revolutionary idea: to offer a transformative framework based on accountability, mutual aid, and learning, without permanent public funding or paid supervision.

A true pioneer, Mimi Silbert wears many hats: president, construction manager, school director, real estate developer, and criminal justice consultant. She has overseen evaluations of over one hundred projects for institutions like the National Institute of Mental Health and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and has served on numerous state and federal boards, appointed by several governors and U.S. presidents. Alongside her work at Delancey, she has published landmark studies on prostitution and delinquency, and helped reform San Francisco’s juvenile justice system. Widely honored with national and international awards, she embodies a powerful and singular figure of social change, driven by an unshakable belief: every person, no matter how broken, can regain dignity and become a contributor to the common good, if offered a fair, demanding, and supportive environment.

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A self-managed community, a living laboratory of resilience

Delancey Street began with a small apartment in San Francisco and four residents. Today, it operates in several U.S. states (California, New York, North Carolina, New Mexico, etc.), and its main complex in San Francisco can accommodate up to 500 people at once.

All aspects of community life are managed by the residents themselves: cooking, cleaning, finances, education, logistics, even a dozen social enterprises, including:

• a well-known restaurant in San Francisco
  
• a moving company
  
• a bookstore-café-gallery
  
• a garage, a print shop, a catering service, and more
  
  

These businesses serve three purposes:

• To give meaning to each daily task
  
• To provide tangible, marketable professional skills
  
• To financially sustain the community independently
  

On average, residents stay between 2 and 4 years, with no relapses or return to prison during that time. 100% earn their GED. There are zero paid supervisors: everything relies on collective intelligence, experiential learning, and distributed leadership.

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A masterpiece built by those society had forgotten

Delancey Street’s philosophy is also embodied in a spectacular act: the construction of its own headquarters on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. The 360,000-square-foot building was built by 300 former “unemployables” trained in construction through partnerships with unions.

“You feel better about yourself because you’re the person who helped pull up these walls.”

Architect Allan Temko praised the project as a “masterpiece of social design” , architecture in service of dignity and transformation.

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Learning from those who are changing the world

This is the transformational power that RealChange seeks to offer the leaders it supports. By organizing immersive visits to Delancey Street, the RealChange team invites participants to meet those who have lived, embodied, and built their own rebirth.

These immersions allow participants to discover:

• A peer-to-peer learning model transferable to organizations
  
• A governance system without vertical hierarchy, but with rigor and commitment
  
• A culture of mutual accountability: each member is both recipient and contributor
  
• A vibrant approach to continuous learning, not as a duty, but as a way of being
  
• The power of restored dignity as a driver of performance and cohesion
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Change cannot be delegated. It must be lived. Together.

At a time when companies are seeking reinvention, when talent is yearning for meaning, and when leadership models are being redefined, Delancey Street sends a clear message: transformation begins with the self and is deeply enabled by a simple system focused on inspiration (act as if…) and positive peer pressure.

This is the message RealChange brings to the leaders it supports. Because a good leader isn’t someone who has all the answers. It’s someone who dares to keep learning, and who creates the conditions for others to grow. At Delancey Street Foundation, learning is neither a privilege nor a mandate. It’s a joyful, shared, embodied duty. And this truth, radical and full of hope, is what RealChange invites us to rediscover: real change cannot be proclaimed. It must be experienced through concrete, meaningful action. Together.

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