RE LOG - Spring 2017

20 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2017 How did you get started? I remember this very vividly. We lived on Miami Beach. I was four-and-a-half years old, and we were go- ing to church. My grandmother had just given me $20. On the way, we stopped at a red light. I was sitting in the back left, and there was a man sitting on the median with a cardboard sign. It said: “Need food, need money, lost my job.” I asked my mom: “Why is he hungry? Why is he asking for food?” I wasn’t aware that there were hungry and homeless people in our community. I really couldn’t grasp it at that age. I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have the meal I just had during breakfast. That impacted me. At that moment, I wanted to help. I gave him the $20. I remember the light turning green – it was a long red light, and I actually dropped the $20 bill. I saw that he was able to grab it. That was the first time I helped somebody. So what happened next? A few weeks later I was watching TV and there was an infomercial from Feed the Children, the orga- nization. We actually partner with them now. They were showing an infomercial about the lives of kids in Africa, the fact they have no clean water, no food, their housing is horrible, they’re dealing with wars, child soldiers, a bunch of things. It ended by saying, “Adopt now.” That was also a big hit for me. It made me more aware of the realities of the world. I had this kind of realization, a call that I should do something, a re- minder that people need help. I went to my mom right after I saw the commercial. I’m an only child; I was thinking, “Oh, I can have a little brother or some- thing.” But then I went to my mom and asked if we could adopt all of the kids. And she said no, we can’t really do that. Were you discouraged? I kept thinking about it. I decided to be a little more firm in my resolve so that my mom would know that I wanted to do something. It actually took a couple months of persistence, every single day on the way to school. Every morning I would be nagging her, reminding her. That persistence went on maybe two months, before she said, “All right, all right, I’ll help you.” The first thing we did was start a project. It was just a family project. We’re Jamaicans, so we cook a lot of curry, rice and peas, jerk kitchen and vegetables. We just started cooking these meals in our kitchen. It was me, my mom, five aunts, my grandma. My little cousin who was two at the time, he would come over. We got tin foil, Styrofoam containers. I remember running around the kitchen trying to help out, but they were all trying to keep me at bay from the hot things. I remember packing things up, taking them to the cars, and we would go to the Julia Tuttle and some other bridges in downtown Miami where the homeless people used to live. We would take the food in the containers and we EDUCATION Ransom Everglades Class of 2018 HONORS Nickelodeon Halo Award Honoree, 2015 CNN Heroes Young Wonder award, 2015 Global Teen Leader, Three Dot Dash, 2014 Walter B. Arnold Jr. Youth Hall of Fame, 2013 The Prudential Spirit of Community National Award, 2013 Black Entertainment Television Shine A Light Honoree, 2013 White House Champion of Change award, 2012 Presidential Volunteer Service Award, 2011 Florida Governor’s Points of Light Award, 2010 City of Miami Beach Proclamation – Joshua Williams Day, 2010 Founder, CEO and Chief Changemaker of the Joshua’s Heart Foundation Joshua Williams discovered his passion for philanthropy at age four and a half when he observed a panhandler on the streets of Miami. He handed the man a $20 gift he had just received from his grandmother. Deeply troubled by the idea that people did not have food or housing, Joshua persuaded his mom, aunts and grandmother to start preparing meals for the homeless in Miami. That effort grew into the Joshua’s Heart Foundation, a youth-focused organization that distributes groceries to needy people throughout South Florida, Connecticut, Jamaica, Africa and India and strives to provide education about global hunger issues. As Joshua balances his studies at Ransom Everglades with his work at his foundation and frequent requests for speeches or interviews, he hopes to eliminate world hunger one community at a time. Joshua Williams ’18 Feeding the Hungry