About Father Joe's Villages
As Southern California’s largest residential homeless services provider, Father Joe’s Villages and its partner agencies St. Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego and Martha’s Village & Kitchen in Indio, CA have been empowering people to achieve self-sufficiency for over 62 years. What started as a small chapel serving San Diego’s impoverished has grown into a cutting-edge provider of innovative housing programs and services. Father Joe’s Villages and its partner agencies prepare up to 4,000 meals and provide a continuum of care to nearly 1,500 individuals every day—from infants and adolescents to adults and seniors. This includes over 200 children and over 200 military veterans. As industry thought-leaders, the agencies offer innovative solutions to address the complex needs of the homeless, regardless of age, race, culture or beliefs. The organizations’ primary goal is to transform lives and end the cycle of homelessness. To this end they provide housing, healthcare, food, clothing, education, job training and child development in an internationally modeled “one-stop-shop” approach. The organizations’ mission is made possible only through the efforts of compassionate staff, dedicated volunteers, and generous public and private donors.
Our CREED
Compassion: Concern for others and a desire to assist.
Respect: An act of giving particular attention or special regard.
Empathy: Understanding, an awareness of and sensitivity to the feelings of others.
Empowerment: Helping others to help themselves.
Dignity: Counting all people worthy of our esteem.
Sister Patricia "Tricia" Cruise, SC
Sister Patricia “Tricia” Cruise, SC is President and Chief Executive Officer of Father Joe’s Villages and its partner agencies: St. Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego, CA and Martha’s Village & Kitchen in Indio, CA.
Prior to Father Joe’s Villages, Sister Tricia served as President and CEO of Covenant House, the largest privately funded agency in the Americas providing food, shelter, immediate crisis care, and essential services to homeless, throwaway, and runaway kids. She provided overall management to the organization and was responsible for annually raising $120 million.
In addition to her work with homeless youth, Sister Tricia has over 32 years of expertise in education and academic administration. Previously, she served as President of Seton High School in Cincinnati, as Executive Vice President and CEO at Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota, and as Director of Campus Ministry/Student Activities at the College of Mount St. Joseph.
Sister Tricia is a vowed member of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati since 1981. She has been a consultant, mediator, and facilitator to nonprofits across the country, and an Adjunct Professor at the College of Mt. St. Joseph. Sister Tricia is also a board member of The Glen at St. Joseph in Dayton, OH and Ronald McDonald House in San Diego, CA, as well as a past board member at St. Joseph’s Home in Cincinnati, OH and St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Lincoln, NE.
Born in Edenton, North Carolina, and raised in Winchester, Massachusetts, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from Russell Sage College (Troy, New York) and a Master of Theological Studies from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The first of four children, Sister Tricia has three brothers and sisters-in-law along with five nieces and one nephew. Her parents reside in Cincinnati, OH.