From Tradition to Transformation: Yoruba Culture as the Basis for a 21st Century Model for Forming Village
Via zoom call, Sunday, March 29th 11:00 AM
Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84712987014
Meeting ID: 847 1298 7014
Passcode: Adura
In his presentation, Baba Joe Quinones will explore a fundamental question facing the global Orisa community: What does it mean to move beyond shared ritual into shared community? Drawing on the historical precedent of Yoruba civilization and decades of grassroots leadership, he introduces a framework for translating spiritual tradition into a modern, structured, and self-sustaining community.
At the center of the presentation is the Orisa Community Social Model—a blueprint built on three interconnected pillars: governance, social life, and economic empowerment. Through this lens, Baba Joe outlines how Orisa practitioners can evolve from a network of houses and lineages into an intentional community grounded in shared values, collective responsibility, and institutional development, which would soon translate into having facilities, social programs, and other supporting structures.
Blending cultural insight, strategic thinking, and real-world application, this presentation challenges listeners to rethink what is possible for the Orisa community in the 21st century and invites them to participate in co-creating a unified, empowered future rooted in tradition.
Baba Joe Quinones Short Biography
Baba Joe Quinones is the youngest child of the first African American initiated in the USA, Marjorie Bayne Quinones Sango Gunmi and is the first person born exclusively into the Yoruba spiritual tradition on November 9th, 1962, in NYC. He was initiated to Aganju on May 26, 1979, by Babalorisa Lloyd Weaver (ibaye) and adjubona Noel Reyes (ibaye), and is a member of Ile Ase, one of the foundational Orisa lineages in the African American community and the oldest and largest African American Orisa house in the country with well over 250 heads made.
He is a tenth-grade high school dropout and military veteran but went on to graduate at the top of his class from Temple University’s School of Business. He later pursued postgraduate studies in Yoruba history at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Nigeria and earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, with concentrations in Real Estate and Finance.
He has over 30 years of experience as a real estate investor and developer and from 2008 to 2012, led a real estate development company in Lagos, Nigeria, where is presently a partner in a Nigerian real estate investment firm.
Baba Joe has a demonstrated a lifelong commitment to service and community building. In 1990, he founded the community activist organization Afrocentricity United, and later the AT&T Alliance of Black Telecommunications Employees, Philadelphia Chapter, the Coalition of Politically Concerned Professionals.
In 1999, with the encouragement of his elders, he provided the vision for the reimagining of the joint Orisa houses of Baba Lloyd Weaver (ibae) and Iya Stephanie Weaver (ibae) into what became the legally incorporated and tax-exempt Ile Ase Orisa community.
Baba Joe is the Founder and Chairman of the Orisa Community Development Corporation, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year. His work is driven by a sense of calling to serve his community through the development of a modern village, one supported by institutions designed to protect, preserve, and perpetuate its way of life.
He is a full-time single dad residing in Philadelphia raising his children Akinseye and Anike, who are now 19 and 17 years old, and continue his family’s multi generations long line of Orisa worshipers and servant leaders within the community.
His full bio and journey can be found here: https://www.orisacdc.org/joseph-t-quinones
About the Orisa CDC
Vision Statement
Our vision for the Orisa Community is for us to prosper as a unified community with a cultural foundation based on traditional community values, high moral standards, and professional excellence. We will have community owned assets that fund a social agenda that fosters within the community a sense of empowerment and stake in itself.
Mission Statement
The Orisa Community Development Corporation will spur the advancement of the Community by providing leadership in the development of a social model that fosters collectiveness, economic empowerment and self-determination.
We fulfill our mission by providing strategic planning, programs and initiatives that build sustainability, pride, and the perpetuation of our way of life through the reintroduction of the concept of village in the context of modern society. We will develop the financial base of our Community through fundraising, social entrepreneurship, and other economic activities.
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