I s a Don Bosco priest involved in Youth Ministry for the past forty years. As a young priest, he was appointed Director of Don Bosco Youth Center, Perambur, Madras in 1974.

He did his Masters in Social Work at Loyola College, Madras and he was the University Gold Medalist. In 1979, he started the Post Graduate Department of Social Work at Sacred Heart College, Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. He was the Founder Director of Bosco Institute of Social Work (BISW), Tirupattur until 1994. He introduced the specialization in Youth Welfare at the Masters level in BISW. In 1988, this specialization was started in Social Work, at Tirupattur the only place, perhaps,where such a specialization is possible in India today.

He did his further studies in the United States of America: MS in Clinical Social Work, Ph. D in Sociology and continued with another Ph. D studies in Social Work on ‘Policy, Planning, and Administration” in Columbia University in New York.

He has conducted an extensive research on youth in India. He has studied the problems, attitudes, values, and semantic differences of 5000 youth in India. This study was published in a book “Indian Youth in Perspective”. Another research was done on the street children in Madras and was published in a book “Street Children of Madras”. A third book of his is “A Manual for Family Counselors”.

In 1996, he started another youth training and animation center Bosco Institute of Research and Development for Youth (BIRDY), Hyderabad. This is a Professional Training Cum Research Center, reaching out to the Youth and the Youth Workers, Educators, Religious, Leaders and Management.

Personnel in the Caring Profession carrying out its mission of Liberation among the youth especially the marginalized. BIRDY had ten reach out Don Bosco Nava Jeevan (DBNJ) Centers for the street children and child labourers in the 10 district headquarters of Andhra Pradesh. BIRDY with its challenging motto: DARE AND SOAR carried out its mission for the youth through the ten departments.

Its special focus is on ‘Integration of Mastery and Mystery’, reaching out to the religious on the one side and the corporate sector on the other side.Since 1998 he has been involved in conducting Evaluation Research on The Life, Mission, and Ministries of the Religious in different provinces of various Congregations.

He has completed 15 such researches. There are other researches like Social Audit, Sexennial Plan, Visioning, Action Research, and other Need based Surveys. In all, about 25 researches have been completed.

In May 2007, Fr. Joe moved to Delhi where he has started a third centre. The new centre is known as DB-ARK, DON BOSCO’s ARK – ARK stands for ANIMATION & RESEARCH KENDRA. Once again, it is going further in the pursuit of making youth-work more professional and scientific - from practice, to training, to research, and now to policy analysis and further.

He is in the resource tam of the CBCI Education and Culture Commission, a resource person in theCRI, a resource person in the AIACHE, AINACS, and now he is on the move around the country to motivate Christian Educational Institutions to rise to higher heights.