April 12, 2024
REST IN PEACE
Joe Selvaggio, founder of multiple Twin Cities non-profit organizations, who inspired countless Minnesotans to lead lives of compassion and social change has died. He was 87 years old.
Born in Chicago in 1937, to an Italian immigrant Father, and a first-generation Italian-American mother, Selvaggio spent his childhood living and working in an ethnically diverse Chicago neighborhood, attending Our Lady Help of Christians Elementary School and Fenwick High School. His family lived above his father’s awning shop on Division Street, where Selvaggio and his brother John would work after school.
Selvaggio became keenly aware of inequality from a very early age, when visiting relatives in the wealthy suburbs of River Forest and Lincolnwood. After attending Marquette University, he entered the Dominican order of the Catholic priesthood. He was ordained in 1965 and spent 3 years serving in low-income communities, including Holy Rosary Church/Santa Rosario in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. While in the order, he’d read the Encyclicals, and became active in the movements forged by Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr., and worked to end the Vietnam war. These experiences led him to want to do more to alleviate poverty, and in 1968 he left the priesthood.
That same year, he married Phoebe Yaeger, and in 1971 they adopted 2 boys, and also had a biological son. In 1972, while speaking on urban poverty at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, he met Ted Pouliot, an early funder of the non-profit that Selvaggio went on to found later that year, Project for Pride in Living. In its 52 years, PPL has helped to house countless MN families and graduated thousands of people from their various self-sufficiency programs. PPL continues its work today, with a multi-million dollar operating budget.
In 1981 he and Phoebe divorced, and in 1983 he married Rosario Escanan, a history teacher from the Philippines, who was being targeted by the Marcos regime for her social justice activism. He and Rose adopted a daughter, Riza, and in 1997, he passed the torch of being PPL’s Executive Director to Steve Cramer.
He and Rose loved traveling, and visited over 50 countries, from The Philippines to Guatemala to South Africa to Italy. During these years, he also founded The 1% Club, recruiting Minnesotans of means to pledge 1% of their wealth annually, to the charity of their choice.
In 2003, The MN History Theatre presented a one-man show about Selvaggio, entitled “Joe.”
In 2008 he founded Microgrants, a non-profit devoted to giving small grants to people of potential, and the organization behind the “Lights On!” program.
Joe was a member of CORPUS.