Father Joseph (2015)

Father Joseph founded Haiti's largest micro-credit bank for the poor (Sèvis Finansye Fonkoze) with a special mission of empowering peasant women through literacy classes, small business training, and community-building loans. He also founded a 700-student K-14 school, an orphanage, a clean water project, a reforestation program (planting thousands of trees), a health clinic, and a radio station, a home construction effort, and The University of Fondwa (Haiti's first rural college). Along the way, several of his close friends and colleagues were murdered because of their work for the poor. Almost everything Father Joseph built over 25 years was destroyed by the 2010 earthquake, but he keeps moving forward with an infectious sense of humor, an inspiring determination, and a deep, inclusive faith.