RE LOG Fall 2024

FALL 2024 Ransom Everglades LOG 9 that’s what the whole reformation to 2.0 has been about: getting to use kids’ passions, and going from a youth-led to a youth-run organization.” While Suresh works on the AI team, others work on finance, marketing, recruitment and more. The different teams mean that young people joining JHF can learn to do what interests themmost, according to director Amanda Avilés, one of the foundation’s handful of staff workers and a long-term volunteer. “Now that we have this system ... if a kid comes in, even if he has no experience or anything, he can say, ‘Maybe I’m vaguely interested in numbers,’ and we can say, ‘Okay, great; we have a finance team or an impact data team.’ Or if they’re outgoing and social, we can tell them about the recruiting or partners and sponsors teams.” All of it prepares young people to take ownership of the type of leadership Williams was tasked with growing up. Indeed, as he looks back on his own childhood, memories especially vivid on his trips back to Miami, he thinks more often about how founding and leading JHF has impacted his life beyond the rewarding, important and often urgent community work to which he has dedicated so much of his youth and young adulthood. While his work with JHF meant he sat through plenty of detentions while a Ransom Everglades student – which he said were “deserved” due to all his absences from traveling the country for different foundation commitments – Williams said the responsibilities he had as founder also provided him with crucial life skills that helped him at Ransom Everglades as much as they’ve helped him now as a New York professional. It was when entering the job world, he said, that he had to remind himself of the skills he had learned as a kid through Joshua’s Heart. Williams’ goal for the JHF members following in his footsteps is similar: “We want to train the next generation of leaders, provide them the skills and experience to be capable changemakers,” he said. “Whether it’s going into the sciences, whether it’s going into the government, whether it’s going into communities, they have the core skills, which are really around relating yourself with your community. It’s also about being self-aware and learning how to connect and compete in a way, learning how to learn.” Still, growing pains abound – both for the foundation’s reimagining, which is still very much in progress, and for Williams. “On a personal level, I think I’ve had issues as I’ve grown up separating the identity between me and Joshua’s Heart, “A lot of the issues that we will have in the future are really connected to youth development, making sure that we have the leadership and the training and capacity-building for kids to make a change.” – Joshua Williams ’18 Head of School Rachel Rodriguez presents the RE Founders’ Award to Joshua Williams ’18