About Us

Bill Callahan and Dolly Pomerleau founded the Quixote Center in 1976 with a dream to be a progressive faith-based center for challenging injustice. Our founders were influenced by Catholic social teaching and animated by a commitment to solidarity with the vulnerable and marginalized, within the Catholic Church and in society. They dreamed the "impossible dream" of a world more justly loving, armed with the faith that their love and persistence could make impossible dreams come true.

The Center initiated a variety of programs over the years, and some of the larger ones spun off as independent organizations. These include the Christic Institute, New Ways Ministry, Prison Radio, Equal Justice USA, the Nicaragua Cultural Alliance and Interfaith Voices. Our current work focuses on addressing the root causes of poverty, violence, and migration through economic development and environmental restoration in Haiti and Nicaragua, supporting dignity and respite for migrants in Panama and Mexico, and advocating for changes in U.S. foreign and immigration policies that impact the world’s most vulnerable.

The Quixote Center has worked in Nicaragua since 1984, when we launched a program for the delivery of humanitarian aid during the US- imposed Contra War. After the war we continued to partner with the Institute of John XXIII/Association Roncalli on a variety of community development, education and health projects. Our work expanded following hurricane Mitch in 1998, involving the integration of housing construction, community organizing and leadership development. Our housing project, Homes of Hope, built 200 homes, in cooperation with housing cooperatives as well as some individual homeowners, between 2017 and 2022. The government of Nicaragua canceled the Institute’s legal incorporation in 2022.

We launched Haiti Reborn in 1991 in response to the demise of the Duvalier dictatorship and election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After the coup in September of 1991, the work quickly transformed into advocacy for democracy in Haiti and challenging the U.S. role in the coup. In 1999, we launched a reforestation and sustainable agriculture program in Gros Morne, Haiti in partnership with the Montfortians and the Jean Marie Vincent Formation Center. Our partnership with the Montfortains continues through our support for internally-displaced people in the Gros Morne area. In 2025 we began partnering with DCCH (Christian Community Development Haiti) to implement our Socio-Economic Restoration Program in rural communities near Les Cayes.

In 2024, Quixote Center joined with PeaceWorks to support the coffee cooperative El Porvenir to replenish a revolving capital fund to cover harvest costs before bringing their product to the market. After further exploration and connecting with Green Empowerment, Quixote Center started a new program in Waslala to help the CacaoNica cooperative of cocoa producing families increase their productivity and income by complying with organic certification requirements.  

In 2018 we launched a new program focused on Migrant Justice to advance changes in immigration policy, and in 2019 we partnered with the Franciscan Network on Migration (Red Franciscana para Migrantes- RFM). RFM is a network of shelters that serve migrants traveling through Central America and Mexico. In 2022 we launched a travel program to the RFM shelters in southern Mexico and Guatemala as part of our efforts to help activists and others understand better the situation migrants face as they make their way north, and the role of U.S. policy. In 2023 we launched a program to strengthen the capacity of the RFM team in Panama as the migrant path in their country became increasingly perilous. The Quixote Center serves as the Franciscan Network’s U.S. fiscal sponsor.