When Joshua Williams was 5, he caught sight of starving children in one of those sponsor-a-child TV ads. His mother, Claudia McLean, noticed tears in his eyes as he turned to her and sputtered, "Mom, look at those kids!"
When he demanded that his mother adopt the children he had seen on TV, she told him they could sponsor one child. But he wasn't satisfied with such a small effort. He knew that fixing such extreme suffering required more than a few dollars.
"I realized he'd never seen anything like that before," Ms. McLean reflected, remembering how the distressing images sparked big ideas in her little boy. "He wanted to make a place for people to come where they can have food all the time.”
Three years later, he is one of the younge
st foundation presidents in the world, leading Joshua's Heart Foundation, the Miami Beach NGO he dreamed up and named himself, which has so far distributed 250,000 pounds of food to needy people in South Florida communities.
With a cheerful smile and a mop of curls, he hands out cans and boxes of cereal to those who come to the tent-and-table food banks he and his family and a cadre of volunteers create every month in front of area churches.
"I want to give food to them so they won’t be hungry and they won't starve," the young social entrepreneur explained.
Heart on His Sleeve
It all started much smaller, though, with a donation to one hungry man. On his way to church one Sunday shortly after he had seen the TV ad, Joshua sat in the back seat clutching the $20 his grandmother had given him to spend on toys or other treats. When a homeless man appeared, begging and dirty beside the car, Joshua announced that he wanted to give the man his money.
His mother suggested that they go to the store and buy 
the man some food, but Joshua would not be deterred. "What if he doesn't like what we give him?" he asked. The $20 went to the beggar, and from that moment on Joshua’s heart was set on continuing what he had started.
He asked his mother to help him put together a big project, the kind that would help many people instead of just one. Busy with her job as Director of Operations for her family’s home healthcare service company, McLean put him off, suggesting more modest ways he could help out.
When he got impatient, he turned to his mother's sister for help. "I asked my aunt," he said. "But she didn't do anything. So I fired her."
After that, he was relentless. "Every day as I was taking him to school he kept saying 'Mom, I want to do this thing,'" his mother recalled. "'I have a vision. Come on. I want to do this thing.'"
Such big plans are typical of this precocious boy. "He's always coming up with ideas," his mother said. "He wants to be a scientist so he's always inventing things. He keeps a notebook in the car so he can write down ideas."
This idea turned out to be one with a future. When McLean's sister happened to hear a nonprofit expert on the radio talking about how to create a foundation, they all knew the universe was telling them something. McLean called the radio guest, who invited Joshua to come in for a consultation.
By the end of the meeting, he had decided on a name, a logo design and the logo's colors ("white for the sky, blue for the ocean and green for the land," according to Joshua). His family invested some money to get the logo professionally designed and to incorporate the foundation as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
A Demanding Venture
Once Joshua's Heart Foundation was up and running, Joshua's family rallied around the little executive director, and over the last three years, it has become a well-oiled machine.
Every month the family chooses a different church in a poor area from which to distribute food. Family members go into the Section 8 housing in the community to tell people about the upcoming distribution. McLean and Joshua secure sponsorships and solicit donations of money and food, procuring goods from the Daily Bread Food Bank and Costco. They also receive food from organizations, students and companies.
On distribution day an army of volunteers – Joshua included – are in their places behind the folding tables, ready to offer sustenance and hope to the 500-some people who come to get help. Every two weeks, McLean, Joshua and others also deliver food to sick and elderly residents in their community.
"I had no idea that this was going to grow to such a demanding venture," said McLean, who needs increasing volunteer help with many aspects of the organization.
Not Kidding Around
The Foundation runs on the efforts of volunteers, some of them pint-sized. McLean notes that many of the volunteers who help are new to service, including members of "Joshua’s Elves," a team of children who help with food distribution and fundraising.
Kids, in fact, are central to everything the Foundation does. The Jr. Advisory Board is comprised of members under 17. A literacy program donates books to kids who don’t have them. A special committee is coming up with ideas for how to help students in local communities.
Most impressively, at his eighth birthday party last year, Joshua asked his guests to donate money instead of bringing presents, an effort that ended up raising $5,000. Joshua donated the money to help fix up the teen center in the City of Hallandale Beach, Florida. The Foundation's first annual fundraiser in December, called Follow the Candy to Joshua's Heart – based around a Candy Land theme – will raise money to increase food distribution and provide tutors for the students who use the teen center.
"If people support me, they might help make a difference,” Joshua said. “When you make a difference, it helps other people. It makes me feel good. I think God gave me the vision. My purpose is to help the poor."
But despite his serious mission, he’s still a little boy at heart. When asked his favorite thing about doing what he does, the fourth-grader paused for a minute to think. Then the verdict: "When I do food distribution, I usually play with the kids."
Source: Tonic.com
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