Jay Vilar, program director, oversees urban agriculture, nutritional coaching and reentry programs for Haley House. A white picket fence denotes the boundary of the urban oasis on Thornton Street in Roxbury. It’s an image that usually calls up the idea of middle-class suburban life, the individuality of the American dream. But the white picket fence here is a little different, points out Jay Vilar, program director for the nonprofit Haley House. Its lack of a front gate allows the people of the surrounding community to come and go as they please.
What lies beyond the fence is an urban farm and community garden, built by and for the neighborhood it serves. Walking along its perimeter, Vilar is dressed for a crisp fall day in jeans and a navy vest. He points out the raised garden beds, each tended to by a member of the community. His own box features large stocks of leafy green kale, an abundance of peppers and a lone eggplant struggling to grow.
Moving farther onto the large plot of land, Vilar’s Converse-clad feet lead him down the long rows of the urban farm. Although the primary growing season has come to an end, bright orange marigolds, other edible flowers and herbaceous plants remain. In one corner, he gestures to where Haley House plans to build an outdoor teaching kitchen, reflecting the organization’s responsiveness to community needs — a key feature to its long-running success.
“The overarching mission of Haley House is food with purpose and the power of community — serving those made most vulnerable through social injustice,” Vilar said.
A Washington-D.C.-area transplant, Vilar came to Haley House with a background in business development and sustainable food practices. He joined as program director in 2021, following his desire “to be able to go deep into one organization’s work.” He was brought on as part of an effort to revitalize the programs that had been hampered by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As program director, Vilar oversees the organization’s urban agriculture, nutritional coaching and reentry programs, and works to support “our program managers that do that work day-to-day.”
Haley House was founded in 1966 by Kathe and John McKenna when they rented a South End apartment to house men they found sleeping on the street, offering them a cot and a warm meal.
In the almost six decades since, Haley House has greatly expanded its operations to include a soup kitchen staffed by live-in volunteers, 110 units of affordable housing, plots of urban agriculture, a food pantry and various educational and training programs for those facing barriers to traditional employment. Today, Haley House’s reach spans the South End and Roxbury.
“I had a friend of mine describe her experience of coming to Haley House. She was like, ‘You know, Haley House is like going to church. You’re gonna get
good food, you’re gonna meet some people with great vibes, and they may
not have the resources for you, but they know where to go get it,’”
Vilar said.
His
introduction to Haley House was through its urban agriculture program,
which he now directs. The nonprofit is currently the steward of two
plots of land: the Thornton Street Farm and the Mel King School Garden.
Partnering with other organizations, like Hawthorne Youth and Community
Center, volunteers grow produce that is then utilized in the soup
kitchen, Highland Park Senior Produce Delivery program and Take Back the
Kitchen (TBK) classes.
TBK,
also under Vilar’s oversight, is Haley House’s free cooking and
nutrition program, which teaches students the benefits of cooking from
scratch and provides them with basic cooking skills.
The classes are lively and welcoming, bringing together members from across the community.
Chatting
animatedly, groups of three stand around raised tables set with cutting
boards, knives and sheet pans littered with colorfully chopped
vegetables.
David
Delvalle, program manager for TBK, captures their attention with an
energetic, booming voice: “Alright, chefs — listen up! Now I’m going to
show you the best way to dice an onion.” Once his demonstration is
complete, the groups return to their task at hand — preparing
lemon-herbed chicken and a vegetable sauté.
Once
the cooking is finished, each attendee dishes up a plate and sits
around a small table, tightly packed with chairs, in a moment of
community.
“Each class
you see one or two new people in it, which is pretty great because I
want them to bring more people. I’m always telling people about this
program, so they can be involved in Take Back the Kitchen as well. A lot
of people need to cook for themselves, so they can provide healthy
foods for their families,” said Ashley Aka, a registered nurse and
regular for the past year. Through TBK, she has learned new skills that
she has been able to apply to her cooking at home, like how to cut an
onion in a way that prevents you from tearing up.
Delvalle
said the TBK curriculum “is always changing. It’s always morphing to
fit the right population and meet a demographic’s needs.” After serving a
10-and-a-half-year prison sentence and being paroled a year ago, the
30-year-old started working for Haley House in March and is also the
first formerly incarcerated man to gain full admission into Tufts
University.
Delvalle
credits Vilar for his position at Haley House, citing him as “an
inspiration” for his ability to pivot from working in the corporate
world to now working for a nonprofit. “(He) inspires me to believe that
it will work out for me, the fact that I can pivot and leave my life
behind and turn to … being an educator. It’s only possible by people
like Jay who show me that change is possible,” he said.
Under
Vilar, Delvalle has grown as a leader. “Jay is just so understanding …
he shows a lot of empathy,” Delvalle said. “I’m grateful to have him as a
boss because there’s a lot of other people that would have judged me,
that would have not embraced me and not guided me through my
transition.”
In
addition to TBK, Vilar directly manages Haley House’s Life Foundations
Training (LiFT) reentry program. Its intention? To help find and create
opportunities for formerly incarcerated people. Returning citizens meet
bi-weekly with advocates to prepare a community meal, figure out the
specific supports each member needs and develop soft skills.
Representatives from reentry community partners are also brought in to
share how members can tap into preexisting housing, employment, mental
health, job training and education programs.
To
manage such a heavy workload, Vilar and his team rely on numerous
spreadsheets and calendars to coordinate all of Haley House’s
activities. They also place a heavy focus on collecting feedback from
community members who utilize its programs as a means to understand the
impact they’re having and how they can improve. Ultimately, “a lot of it
is understanding what your bandwidth is and what the bandwidth of your
team is,” Vilar said.
Vilar
is confronted daily with what it means to be at the bottom of the
social and economic ladder. He recalls days in dead-of-winter February
at six o’clock in the morning when people are waiting in droves outside
the soup kitchen that doesn’t open for another few hours. In the bitter
cold, community members wait in shivering silence for Vilar or one of
his colleagues to come into the kitchen and turn on the lights that
connect to a heater and provide them with a “reprieve of heat.”
“There’s no easy solution at any given point,” Vilar said, but “you’re doing what you can.”
According
to Haley House’s latest newsletter, in the past year, the nonprofit
distributed over 9,000 bags of food through its food pantry, hosted more
than 100 TBK classes, delivered over 1,000 pounds of fresh produce to
seniors and provided garden beds for over 70 community members.
At
its core, Vilar hopes that Haley House is an organization that fulfills
the needs of the community it serves rather than one that institutes
solutions based on its own perception of what these needs may be. “We’re
always paying attention to what the community is asking Haley House to
do. If it’s part of our overall mission, we see if we can serve that (in
the programs we develop),” he said.
Moving
forward, Haley House and Vilar are focused on the 2024 reopening of the
Haley House Bakery and Cafe. Established in Nubian Square in 2005, the
cafe closed in 2022 following plans for a new building to be constructed
directly in front of it. Once construction at its new location is
complete, Haley House will restart past programs that relied on the
cafe. This includes its social enterprise program that employs returning
citizens and provides them with practical training in the food service
industry.
Vilar
currently has no plans on leaving Haley House anytime soon. “I want to
be a part of a world in which all economic barriers cannot exist, and we
can all share a meal together, and it’s not the us-versusthem type of
experience or haveor-have-nots,” he said.