About Stairstep

The Stairstep Foundation began in 1992 as a response to a set of crises/challenges that confronted African Americans — poverty, educational failures, racial disparities in almost all health issues, and the birth-to-prison pipeline. Our thinking was that these problems and pains were not new , but had become more intense and widespread than in other historical time periods. We concluded that the critical connections between people that are the bedrock of community health had dissipated or weakened over time and had been replaced by isolation and alienation.