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Father Joseph B. Philippe, CSSp
Father Joseph B. Philippe, CSSp, founded Fonkoze in 1994 and continues to serve as Coordinator of Fonkoze, President of Fonkoze Financial Services, and a Board Director of Fonkoze USA.Father Joseph is also the founder of the Peasant Association of Fondwa (APF) and has been its coordinator since 1988. As part of the APF, Father Joseph established and helps manage numerous commercial projects, including an agricultural, reforestation and animal husbandry project, a bakery, a guest center/educational tourist program and a restaurant, as well as an auto parts shop, a guest house, a cement store and a scaffolding rental company. In 2004, Father Joseph also founded the University of Fondwa, an educational institution committed to sustainable and integrated development in rural Haiti.
In 1982, Father Joseph became a member of the Spiritan Catholic Holy Order (Holy Ghost Fathers) and was ordained as a priest. From 1993 to 2001, he was a Bursar for the Spiritan Order, and a member of the Spiritan Order’s Executive Council. He has also served as a member of the Spiritan Order’s training program team for seminarians since 1995. In 2004, Father Joseph was elected the Provincial Superior for the Haiti province of the Spiritan Fathers and served a three-year term.
Father Joseph holds an undergraduate degree in commercial accounting from the Ecole de Commerce André Laroche, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and a Master of Divinity degree with special studies in liturgy and politics from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. He has also studied credit cooperative management at the Centre Lebret in Paris, and attended training in banking administration at Fairfield University in Connecticut.