darryll@ujimaway.org
About
About
Darryll Starks
Founder and CEO
Founder and CEO, has over 25 years of nonprofit experience in a variety of capacities such as management, program development and grant writing.
A native of Dayton, Ohio and a graduate of Fort Valley State University, with a B.S. Degree in Agricultural Engineering Technology, Starks made his home in Atlanta in 1989.
He was employed with IBM for six years as a customer support team leader, however he soon realized his true passion and calling was working with high-risk youth. He resigned from IBM in 1994 and joined ranks with The Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta, where he enjoyed a distinguished 13-year career as the Director of Teen Services.
Starks resigned from the Boys & Girls Clubs in 2007, to pursue his passion as a social entrepreneur and spent two years field testing the book he co-authored entitled ‘12 Things Every Black Boys Needs to Know’.
Shortly thereafter, he accepted a position with Hearts to Nourish Hope, where he served in multiple capacities including revamping Hearts’ Evening Reporting Center and being the catalyst for launching Hearts’ independent living and transitional housing program called The D.O.R.M. (The Development of Responsible Men), in which he served as the director for six years.
Starks brings an intense level of passion, innovation, and leadership to Ujima Way, and his pioneering vision for the agency and his commitment to solve community ills, make him an ideal leader for the organization.
Ujima Way's Board Members
Deborah Anglin
Assistant Board Chairman
Garvey Cills
Treasurer
Alvin Johnson
Secretary
Shirley Smith
Member
Donald K. Cheney
The Board Chairman
Our Approach
Our approach to positively impacting our communities is to galvanize community support in a manner that encourages and promotes cooperative work and responsibility and thus enables us to address issues in our communities as one united force. The organization is based on the Kwanzaa principle Ujima, meaning to build and maintain our communities together and make our brother’s and sister’s problem our problem and solve them together. To this end, Ujima Way aims to establish a massive nationwide crowdsourcing network comprised of corporate partners and donors whose contributions help support our programs as well as the worthy causes of our members and affiliate agencies who are delivering proven strategies and solutions for the betterment of the communities in which we live.
The Strategic Goals and Objectives of Ujima Way, Inc. are to:
- Effectively impact, provide positive outcomes, and affect significant and positive change, within our 8 priority focus areas of Publishing, Innovation & Technology, Youth Enrichment, High Risk Youth, Entrepreneurship, Residential Services, Media, and S.W.A.T.
- Relentlessly pursue the eradication of problems in our 8 targeted areas;
- Recruit and develop a team of proven and highly innovative 5 Star professionals to serve as management and subject matter experts who utilize a tactical approach to manage and deeply impact change and solutions within the 8 funding initiatives;
- Conduct and invest in research relevant to the 8 priority initiatives;
- Develop and deliver state-of-the-art programs, support and solutions geared towards addressing and eradicating problems relevant to high risk and vulnerable community citizens;
- Build a thriving and effective network of grassroots and start up organizations and programs and provide them with resources, technical expertise, training and other support that will help foster a culture of collective work and responsibility and highly effective program outcomes;
- Sponsor and/or conduct special events for charitable purposes to benefit the organization, its targeted initiatives or any of our affiliate or member agencies;
- Our five year goal is to become the leading charitable institution serving the urban community and addressing and eradicating some of the communities most complex challenges.
Our 8 Priority Focus Areas:
Ujima Way, Inc. has identified 8 distinct priority areas that will be the focus of its technical support and innovative service delivery. These focus areas represent a broad range of community challenges we are committed to address in a meaningful way. The greater portion of our funding and technical support efforts will go towards these causes and also be distributed among our member and affiliate agencies who are doing outstanding work in these areas:
- UW Residential: Providing technical and financial support to vulnerable homeless youth and elderly populations
- UW Publishing: Innovative and relevant curricula and program materials created by authors who know the urban population. Support will be given to help validate such works with proper research backing to garner the evidenced-based/research-based seals of approval
- UW Innovation & Technology: Investing in technological innovations in such areas as application development, coding, and STEM education in a manner that encourages and supports urban youth to thrive in the technological arena
- UW Youth Enrichment: Supporting after-school, summer, mentoring, enrichment and sports programs for school aged youth
- UW High Risk: Holistic support, programs and services given to pioneering mental health, substance abuse, prevention, intervention, diversion and re-entry initiatives serving court involved youth and young adults
- UW Entrepreneurial: Support to proven programs that inspire, promote and develop youth entrepreneurs and small minority businesses.
- UW Media: Support to creative and conscious media entities and record labels that promote positive messages to entertain, educate, empower and uplift people.
- UW S.W.A.T. Specialized Ways and Tactics: Two years of specialized and targeted support to strategically and methodically attack one significant community problem.
