Star Contributor of the Month – Felix Van Hove
We are pleased to recognize Felix Van Hove as the Mifos Star Contributor in this June 2025 edition of Star Contributor of the Month. Felix has been one of our most impactful volunteers to date as as in the short timespan that he’s been a part of the community since February he’s helped to reinvigorate development around the web app. Along with Pushpendra and others, he’s been able to mobilize our mentors and contributors around a cohesive development process and roadmap for the web app. The discipline, rigor, structure, and ongoing momentum that Felix has brought came at a critical time, helping us smoothly attract and onboard a solid cohort of front-end development interns that are now contributing and being mentored by Felix and the community through Google Summer of Code, Code for GovTech, and Mifos Summer of Code. He has also solidified the bonds across the community by getting a regularly scheduled meeting going and having all the developers get to personally know each other. Join us in recognizing Felix for his contributions thus far as his attention to detail and the passion and fervor he’s brought to the project has been unmatched. We’re looking forward to getting the web app upgraded to the latest stable verison of Angular and everything else we have in store as part of the evolving roadmap.
Felix Van Hove – Marseilles, France
Brief Bio:
Born in Hamburg (Germany), I’m a freelance software developer and architect, working fully remote. Most of my work life I worked in telecoms, primarily with Java, but since 2016 (when I arrived in France) almost exclusively with Salesforce.
Relevant Skills/OS Experience:
I was several times involved in Open Source in my life, and projects like bewelcome.org have shaped who I am and how I think. And then there’s of course – working in software development in different positions and countries since about 1997 or so 😉
My Impact:
How I discovered Mifos:
I was actually browsing the curious list of “Digital Public Goods”: https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/registry
Contributions I’ve made thus far:
Shape of the project: make us consistently use a ticketing system; work on specific objectives (release, Angular upgrade); get to know to each other by developer meetings; get version control in a better state; and code, of course.
Project I’m currently working on or planning to:
Get to a supported Angular version.
Impact I have had (or hope to have) on the poor:
That’s a frightening question, because the fight against poverty is a primary motivation for me, but up to now I’m not sure my work in Mifos has had any impact at all. My wife was born and educated in Sudan and works for Médecins Sans Frontières. There’s hardly any moment when we don’t think of people in less privileged places. I very, very much hope one day to have the time to work with smaller organizations or even NGOs that utilize Mifos and can sense the positive role this software plays first hand.
Advice to the Mifos Community:
Avoid flying 😄
Fun Facts About Felix
Favorite Food:
vegan Thai green curry
Favorite Open Source Project:
Currently Mifos, without a doubt
If I could travel to one place in the world, it would be:
I miss the friends I got in many countries; to name just one of the places where I had a friend: Chișinău
Interesting fact/tidbit you’d like to share with Mifos community about yourself:
I’m precisely 2m tall.
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