A few words about
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Our projects
Goals For The Next Three Years
Our 2023 – 2026 goal is to increase program participants, maintain our 100% job placement rate, and work more closely with our partners and find new alliances to create more opportunities for single mothers and women to move from poverty to sustainability and wellness.
Our current project, working with a new clinic partner Davis Street Primary Care, conducting a female health forum in Sept 2023, placing women in jobs, and training new manicurists and medical manicurists will allow DNNC STS to sustain, maintain, and increase all program goals over the next 3 years.
We would also like to explore and create a feasibility plan to expand our business to Los Cabos, Mexico. Our program to provide equity for women will go a long way in an environment where women suffer from economic depression and more in Mexico.
A. Medical Pedicurist training is ongoing; however, we plan to start a training by March 31, 2023 that concludes July 30, 2023. However, ongoing training for manicurist will be held monthly from October 2023 to June 30, 2024. The Financial planning and etiquette class will be combined, and our goal is for this to take place April 2024. We will host a female health forum with a prominent gynecologist Dr. Rhoda Nussbaum and Dr. Wanda Johnson this September at the San Leandro Public Library.
B. Ongoing job readiness support provided through June 30, 2024.
C. DNNC STS seeks to place at least 1 manicure students at Davis Street Primary Care as podiatric assists up to June 30, 2024.
D. Mental health support is available on an ongoing basis for all DNNC STS participants until June 30, 2024.
E. DNNC STS staff, nail salon clients, and health professionals provide ongoing mentorship
B. Ongoing job readiness support provided through June 30, 2024.
C. DNNC STS seeks to place at least 1 manicure students at Davis Street Primary Care as podiatric assists up to June 30, 2024.
D. Mental health support is available on an ongoing basis for all DNNC STS participants until June 30, 2024.
E. DNNC STS staff, nail salon clients, and health professionals provide ongoing mentorship
DNNC Steps to Success, created by Delane Sims, is an organization designed to empower women, that is informed by Delane’s own life experience as a previous single mother of four children. DNNC Steps to Success started organically in 2000 and was formalized in 2016. This program primarily helps African American low-income single mothers alleviate employment and health hardships while providing them with a vocation as a manicurist to encourage a living wage and provide social skills support.
In 2005, Delane was the Death Penalty Outreach Coordinator for the ACLU of Northern California. While educating the public about the broken death penalty system, Delane met and spoke to many serving time in prison. She noticed one thing that most prisoners had in common – a single-parent upbringing complicated with the weight of poverty and dysfunction. Delane saw these men as often being at the bottom of the cliff where the ambulance was trying to pick up the pieces and wondered how to help people to not get close to the cliff in the first place. Delane realized that if mothers who are raising children alone could get the help they needed, this would be one way to stop people from getting anywhere near the edge of dispair. Of course, being a single-parent is not a pathology, after all, many great people are products of single-parent households, however, helping mothers thrive financially who are struggling to make ends met can set a families path in the right direction – away from the cliff.
Our innovative approach is unlike any other program. We use a nail care salon as an entrepreneurial incubator that also allows women to help other women. We are especially proud of our dynamic “women-helping-women” model where both staff and clients of our teaching salon provide mentoring and support. Our nail clients represent a range of successful professions and positive life experiences. Salon clients get to interact and receive services from program participants and, if they choose, can become a part of a community of role models for our program. These enthusiastic salon client mentors introduce our participants to various new experiences, such as a chance to attending social and civic community events, introduce and share new literature on various topics, or shadowing professional experiences.
By connecting program participants to clients mentors who role model productive life outcomes, participants become greatly inspired and receive specific advice to make social and economic changes in their lives. This means a manicure takes on an entirely new meaning in the salon where one not only receives quality services but also has the chance to change the lives of single mothers and their children.
Therefore, Steps To Success provides a one-stop comprehensive and coordinated program with personalized mentoring and social skills support in a real world work environment. We find this to be an effective alternative to ‘a la cart’ programming because we help participants easily connect with resources that would otherwise prove too overwhelming to locate while juggling family and work responsibilities.
Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, single motherhood is now becoming the new “norm”.
This prevalence is due in part to the growing trend of children born outside marriage — a societal trend that was virtually unheard of decades ago.
1. About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers.
2. Nearly two-thirds were born to mothers under the age of 30.
3. Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 — a total of about 17.2 million — are being raised without a father.
4. Of all single-parent families in the U.S., single mothers make up the majority.
A. Medical Pedicurist training is ongoing; however, we plan to start a training by March 31, 2023 that concludes July 30, 2023. However, ongoing training for manicurist will be held monthly from October 2023 to June 30, 2024. The Financial planning and etiquette class will be combined, and our goal is for this to take place April 2024. We will host a female health forum with a prominent gynecologist Dr. Rhoda Nussbaum and Dr. Wanda Johnson this September at the San Leandro Public Library.
B. Ongoing job readiness support provided through June 30, 2024.
C. DNNC STS seeks to place at least 1 manicure students at Davis Street Primary Care as podiatric assists up to June 30, 2024.
D. Mental health support is available on an ongoing basis for all DNNC STS participants until June 30, 2024.
E. DNNC STS staff, nail salon clients, and health professionals provide ongoing mentorship
B. Ongoing job readiness support provided through June 30, 2024.
C. DNNC STS seeks to place at least 1 manicure students at Davis Street Primary Care as podiatric assists up to June 30, 2024.
D. Mental health support is available on an ongoing basis for all DNNC STS participants until June 30, 2024.
E. DNNC STS staff, nail salon clients, and health professionals provide ongoing mentorship
DNNC Steps to Success (DNNC STS) will provide access to wellness, financial, housing, and mental health resources.
Mentorship and workshop sessions will involve, mental health support, a forum to discuss and educate on the subject of female health, financial planning, parenting, healthy eating, cooking, and etiquette classes.
DNNC STS is establishing a partnership and pipeline with Davis Street Primary care in San Leandro which serves low-income patients with an integrated, whole-person care approach. DNNC STS will increase the diversity of their care by adding diabetic foot care and diabetes wellness classes with the support of a podiatrist, Dr. Alicia Rozario, and Wanda Johnson, a nurse practitioner. This collaboration will result in at least 1,500 underserved patients receiving preventive diabetic foot care and critical information to maintain and increase their health.
As our number of patients increases, we will be able to provide more employment opportunities to the women in our program who will be trained as podiatry assistants or medical pedicurists. Our goal is to train 2 – 6 women to receive their state certification as well as advanced training as medical pedicurists. We will also seek to place 2 – 10 women a year with podiatry assistant training in various podiatry offices, clinics, and hospitals in the future.
While our primary emphasis has been the manicure industry, DNNC STS has expanded to all fields of cosmetology. We are now in discussion with skilled nursing facilities to provide needed hair care for both beautification and sanitary health
With all that is taking place in the world it is imperative for me as the founder and creator of DNNC Steps to Success to explain why this organization was created and why we need your support! I was a single mother at the age of 14. It was a very daunting and difficult start to my teen years especially as a Black female. I managed to navigate my way out of poverty and despair but not before having 3 more children and a failed marriage by the time I was 24. While I fought to get my children into good schools, provide decent housing and food what I later come to realized was that I was fighting a battle against a force that was bigger than Goliath – it was institutional racism!
Based on my life circumstances and those of my peers, I discovered many disparities in health, education, and overall well-being among single Black mothers. After all my research, I concluded that these inequities were as a direct result of a society that began as seeing Black people as not being equal or even human. The lasting and damaging affects of slavery are real and have created chasms that have been insurmountable until – now.
DNNC Steps to Success was created to give women and mother’s, who have pressure both from society and internally, a chance to raise their children to be productive while maintaining their own dignity and peace of mind.
It makes such a difference when some of life’s burdens can be lifted from Black woman and single mothers especially when it comes to obtaining basic necessities. However, we also provide an occasional respite so our program participants can recalibrate from mulitpal stressors.
We are seeing a shift in the consciousness of America and the world that I believe will leave us better suited to address the systemic cause of racism. When this happens, perhaps there will no longer be a need for organizations like DNNC Step to Success to exist.
Delane Sims
Executive Director/Founder
Executive Director/Founder
Another single parent this year received a gift of a car from DNNC Steps to Success that will forever change her life. This parent lives in a shelter and having a car will provide her with a way out. In her letter to us, she wrote that she will use the car as a means to secure employment as a food delivery driver so she can earn money, with her child, to save for an apartment. We are thrilled to provide her with this lifesaving gift!
A. Onsite training and workshops both in-person and via Zoom for medical pedicurists, financial planning, etiquette classes, and female health. DNNC STS plans to host a forum on female health at the San Leandro library.
B. DNNC STS seeks and shares housing opportunities with participants.
C. DNNC STS has started a new partnership with a podiatrist, nurse practitioner, and Davis Street Primary care in San Leandro to provide diabetic footcare and diabetic wellness classes to the Davis Street community.
D. Mental health providers are available to counsel and support DNNC participants.
E. DNNC STS staff and nail salon clients provide mentorship and guidance.
Examples of how donations can help one single mother obtain a career
Examples of how donation can help just one single mother obtain a career
- $1,500 Cosmetology School
- $4,000 Medical Manicurist Certification
- $1,000 Externship
- $1,000 Emergency Fund
- $2,500 Family Counseling
A few words about
Outcomes
A. Personal Goals: Each participant has individual goals based on their personal “Success Plan.” Our goal is to help each participant achieve 75% of their outlined goals. Collective Goals: Overall, we hope to reach a goal of no less than 90% collectively for all DNNC STS participants to obtain job training, job preparedness and job placement.
B. Housing resources are identified and shared. DNNC STS has placed 5 families in secure permanent housing. DNNC STS is seeking to facilitate the placement of 1-5 more families in our housing by June 30, 2023.
C. DNNC STS currently has 1 student enrolled in our advanced medical manicure class and will start a new cohort in March 2023. DNNC STS seeks to enroll 1-10 new medical pedicure students by June 30, 2024. This will lead to job placement of 1 – 10 women with thriving wage employment
D. DNNC STS seeks 95% mental health participation.
E. DNNC STS mentorship and guidance will help single mothers and women with family planning and decision making that will increase positive outcomes in the areas of health, safety, and security.
Measurement
A. Needs assessments and surveys will be provided and evaluated after each activity. The results of these surveys and assessments will provide DNNC STS with measurable outcomes for both individuals and the overall program.
B. Capturing the actual number of housing placements facilitated by DNNC STS.
C. Track school placement of DNNC STS students enrolled and who graduate.
D. Track number of DNNC STS participants who sign up for mental health support.
E. Surveys and sign-in list will help DNNC STS measure results.