The House

Haley House is a spiritually based community nurtured by the personalist tradition of the Catholic Worker Movement.  As a community and as individuals, Haley House struggles to carry out a double mandate: to minister to the needs of society’s forgotten people and to challenge and offer alternatives to the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and perpetuate suffering and violence.

 

Haley House believes that an individual will be better equipped to help himself or herself if he or she can receive the respect that every human being must have in order to grow and prosper.  Volunteers have learned that recovery is possible when people participate by committing themselves with others to attempt to end the condition and state of mind of homelessness.  Men and women, some of whom are formerly homeless, live together in community, manage and staff the soup kitchen, and join in the operation of the extended Haley House organization.  Recently, a team of these men and professional volunteers has stared up an entrepreneurial effort in the form of a bakery, which has grown into a prospering business in Dudley Square .

 

The soup kitchen is open to homeless men for breakfast from 5:30 AM to 10:00 AM and meals for the elderly are served 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM.   The morning guests are homeless for a variety of reasons: alcohol and drug addition, serious psychological problems, and unemployment.  Some have rooms but no employment; some have marginal or temporary jobs with little income.  Many sleep in local shelters.  Elderly neighbors join the other guests three evenings each week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, for food and companionship.  Many of the senior citizens served live in isolated rooms or senior housing projects.

4Boston's Role

Most 4Boston volunteers work one morning shift or elderly meal every
week (assisting with meal preparation and serving, running the
clothing room, engaging with guests, cleaning up), however, there are
many different ways 4Boston volunteers can be a part of the Haley
House community. Students can do editorial work for Spare Change magazine
(an independent media outlet for alternative arts, a voice for social
justice, and a dignified supplemental income for vendors), work in the
Haley House Corner Shop or Haley House Bakery Cafe selling delicious
baked goods from HH's Bakery Training Program (designed to promote
self-sufficiency for underemployed people with barriers to employment,
such as CORI constraints), work over the weekend at Noonday Farm in
Wichendon Springs (a model for sustainable living, grows organic
vegetables and flowers to distribute to people of limited means), and
those especially computer-inclined can work as an administrative
assistant to the incomparable Haley House co-founder Kathe McKenna.

Hours

Soup Kitchen – Breakfast: M-F: 6am-10am    

Elderly Lunch Meal: T, TH 1:30pm-5:30pm

Retail Corner Shop: M-F 4pm-8pm            

Cookie Production: M, W, TH: 6-10pm

'Art is Life Itself' Open Mic.  Thursday Night: 6-10pm

Office Administration:  M-F: By Arrangement

 

Council Member

            Greg Forkins                                forkins@bc.edu

Location

Volunteers can take the (T) Green Line to Copley.  Turn right down Dartmouth and walk about a half mile.  The House is located in Boston 's South End at:

23 Dartmouth St , Boston , MA 02116 .  Google Maps

For more information . . .

You can always contact the council member above if you have any questions about 4Boston's Haley House group.

Haley House has a website located at: http://www.haleyhouse.org.