One man. Ten thousand meals a week. And he’s just getting started.
Darius Yaw Jones has been told the reason he’s so effective at his job is because he had absolutely no training for it.
An African American and Indigenous Navy veteran and former butcher at downtown’s Urban Farmer, Darius has had minimal experience in social work and the nonprofit world. In April, however, Darius took over a new position as the emergency culinary director for Catholic Charities of Oregon. In a matter of months, he has built a symbiotic network of nonprofits, meal assistance programs, farms, businesses, award-winning chefs, and volunteers into a well-oiled machine capable of producing tens of thousands of nutritious meals every week for those experiencing food insecurity in Portland during the pandemic.
He said six months, a year ago, he and many of the chefs he now works with wouldn’t be qualified to be where they now stand.
“I’ve said it so many times...I wouldn’t be qualified, Gregory Gourdet wouldn’t be qualified, because we don’t understand the system,” Darius said. “We don’t know what it entails, we’re not trained in social services, but here we are. Every week my boss is like, ‘You just get things done,’ because I’m breaking through the bureaucracy.”
As a contractor with the Catholic Charities, Darius can rely on the nonprofit to navigate the bureaucracy and the policy, leaving him to focus on what’s important, he said: “I need to worry about the volunteers in the kitchen and that food is being moved around the city properly to the right places.”
Darius has been running nearly nonstop since taking over the position, which is funded in part by the Multnomah County Joint Office of Homeless Services. By his third week, he was overseeing the evening operations at Northwest’s Blanchet House, Southeast’s St. Francis Dining Hall (where he is also the culinary director), and Clark Family Center. Over the same three weeks, Darius and a rotating team of volunteer cooks, including Departure culinary director Gregory Gourdet and former colleagues from the Nines Hotel, prepared 15,000 meals. And over the following four weeks, Darius’ expanding network of contacts, chefs and volunteers repurposed another $45,000 worth of food caught in the distribution line into thousands more hot meals.
Then he raced to fill more gaps in meals and staffing across the city.
Nearly three months later, Darius is still accidentally discovering pockets of people experiencing food insecurity, especially on the eastside, where he’s hoping to greatly expand distribution. Just last week, while on a delivery run for Transition Projects -- a nonprofit that helps feed, house, and find pathways to employment for people experiencing homelessness -- Darius came across an entire hotel’s worth of people who were food insecure.
“I had an excess of meals to deliver for one person,” Darius said. But when he arrived, he said, he started talking with neighbors and other community members and found there were dozens more living in the hotel that hadn’t had a hot meal recently. “They said, ‘Yes, we have food stamps, no we haven’t eaten in several days, yes we have a microwave’... I was supposed to provide one (meal), but I was able to provide 50.”
He left the hotel with a new set of logistics to add to his ever-growing list of notes, coordinating with residents on how many meals would be needed on a daily basis. He told them he could likely start delivering as early as the next week.
“I want to figure out how we reach 15,000 meals a week,” said Darius, who hopes to not only expand his own kitchen operations at St. Francis Dining Hall to max capacity, but partner with other meal assistance nonprofits as well. “My goal is to be able to produce 1,000 meals a day (at St. Francis Dining Hall), six days a week, with full delivery, full distribution, full volunteer support.”
It would be impossible to do this work alone, and among Darius’ greatest successes has been his superhuman coordination and ability to build partnerships and organize. Darius has partnered up with a number of local nonprofits and aid groups, including Crisis Kitchen, Victory Project PDX, Meals on Us and Feed the Mass, to carry some of the meal-prepping weight.
And if Darius weren’t busy enough coordinating multiple kitchens and city-wide meal deliveries, he’s also starting more programs to help out farmers and producers. His new Bayfield Market Program is geared toward local farmers whose regular distribution channels have been disrupted by the pandemic. Working with local farms like Baird Orchards, Square Peg Farm, Food Waves and the Colonel Summers Community Garden, Darius is buying high-quality and local produce to fill out food boxes, food pantries, and meals to bring fresh fruits and veggies to many who’ve never eaten them. A butcher program is in the works, too.
A bakery program, set to launch in early August in conjunction with Grand Central Bakery owner Piper Davis, is a money-making venture, Darius said. He hopes to use produce they’ve purchased to bake into goods they can sell at bake sales, plowing the funds raised right back into buying more produce for meals or kitchen equipment they’re in need of.
On any given day, Darius might be trying to coordinate volunteer schedules, cooking, calling folx in search of donations or discounts on food he can buy, looking for people or groups in need of meals, and sitting on the phone all day in search of bread. There are so many people who are food insecure that Darius can find homes for hundreds of meals within minutes, he said.
Darius, who prefers to use his West African last name Yaw instead of Jones, also wants to concentrate his efforts on providing meals for the Indigenous community, as well as Black and other people of color. Currently, he’s providing produce boxes for migrant farm workers across Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Marion Counties, but Darius was distressed when he learned that the Indigenous community is receiving meals inconsistently. He immediately jumped back in triage mode, trying to figure out any connections he might have to start fixing the problem.
That expansive need, and the rapid expansion of his work, have been a blessing and a curse for Darius. He has no website, no social media, no assistant. He doesn’t even really have a name for all of this yet. Every request for food, deliveries, organizing, distribution, and more go through his personal email and phone number. “Right now I am that resource,” Darius said. “I am that contact info, I am that scheduler, I am the master, the baker, the woodmaker, the candlestick maker right now…if I’m in the kitchen every day, I’m failing. I’m failing my job, my community. I said early on to my team at Catholic Charities, failure is not an option...if we do, Covid-19 wins.”
Darius’ most urgent need right now is for volunteers of all abilities. He’s hoping to expand kitchen hours to Sundays, and is looking for people who can work Sunday mornings and evenings. He’s hoping with more awareness about his work, that monetary, food and kitchen donations will come, as well. He’s hoping to not only support the people he’s delivering meals to, but his volunteers, too, with some of those donations.
“I want to be able to provide for some of these extremely talented cooks and people in my kitchen who are ready to dig in for the long haul with me. I just want to be able to give them something,” Darius said. Maybe he could buy them groceries for the week, or pay them for 20 hours and give them groceries. He just wants to start. “So many people you and I know are unemployed. This pandemic doesn’t see sex, race, hate. It’s affecting everybody.”
Eventually, Darius wants to start his own nonprofit, hoping to channel his energy to not only ask for financial or physical support, but to create an avenue for multiple groups of chefs, farmers, and nonprofits to join together to feed those in need. Darius can only spend so much time thinking about that though. He’s focused on the next round of meals he needs to provide.
If you are someone who is interested in volunteering your time, giving money or have kitchen supplies to donate (everything from measuring cups, parchment paper and pots to speed racks, food warmers and cambros), email Darius Yaw (Jones) at wishbonekitchen@gmail.com or call him directly at 218-269-2214.
Samantha Bakall is a Portland-based, Chinese American writer whose work has appeared in The Oregonian, where she covered food for four years; Eater; The San Francisco Chronicle, Travel Oregon and more. Find her work at samanthabakall.com and on Instagram.