Alumni Profiles

B.A., political science and environmental studies (double major), 2008

AmeriCorps VISTA

Center for Bioenvironmental Research

Tulane and Xavier Universities

New Orleans, La.

Josh Lewis graduated from Guilford College about a year ago. He’s now living on food stamps … and he is a Guilford College success story.

Josh lives in New Orleans, earning money that is below the federal poverty level, and he’s a success because the way he lives — engaged in anti-poverty and community-organizing efforts — is exactly his career choice. AmeriCorps VISTA, where Josh serves as a volunteer, exists to serve people who are truly poor. New Orleans has more than its share, and Josh is helping.

Social responsibility is nothing new for Joshua Lewis. Or for his family. His mother went to Guilford College, as did his aunt and his sister. Josh himself attended the College as a member of The Quaker Leadership Scholars Program. The program enables members of the Religious Society of Friends to combine their academic pursuits at Guilford with community activities in a way that strengthens their involvement with Friends. That means that Josh committed to a four-year program involving mentoring, small-group discussions, spiritual direction, leadership development, Quaker studies and community service while at Guilford.

“I grew up with Quaker values,” he says, “but they didn’t truly define me until I went to Guilford College. It was at Guilford that I became aware of how the things I do, the things I say, what I accomplish in the community … those all define who I truly am. And I learned that I want to spend my life working for social justice. I don’t see myself working in the business world.”

New Orleans has been pivotal in forming the person we know as Josh Lewis. Hurricane Katrina hit the city when Josh was at Guilford, and he had a sister living in New Orleans just outside the French Quarter. “She didn’t evacuate,” says Josh, “and we didn’t know where she was for days. We just hoped she was hunkered down someplace dry.” She was, and she eventually made it out safely.

A few weeks after the hurricane hit, a 24-student team from Guilford College traveled to the area to assist with recovery efforts as part of a Friends Disaster Service trip. At the same time, Josh and his sister made the trek back to New Orleans, hoping to start arranging her permanent return.

“The area was basically under martial law,” he says. “There was a daily curfew at about 7 p.m., and no one was allowed in at all unless your neighborhood was authorized for re-entry. My sister living there meant that she and I could get in. The city was a horrible sight. It was surreal.”

An Environmental Studies major, Josh also used the trip to shoot and narrate a 17-minute documentary as a class project. “The hurricane really helped inform how humans impact the environment and vice versa,” he says. “It was a flashpoint and a symbol of great imbalances and conflict in our lives. I mean, I had studied the area environmentally and I knew where the water danger was high, where it was low. But I hadn’t fully grasped the why — why people still chose to build and live in harm’s way.” The documentary (http://class.guilford.edu/psci/kdell/EEA documentaries/New Orleans.mov) examines the why, and it places the choices in a historical context.

All of that sounds deadly serious, and it is. But Josh is, in his own words, goofy, weird: “Thanks to my time at Guilford College, I got comfortable being who I am. Guilford is a place where you can be yourself 100 percent. It gives you the social freedom to explore identities. It gives nurturing support to do that, providing mentors for the journey. Really, it changed the way I fit into the world. I went to Guilford College closed, and now I engage. It was therapeutic and empowering … and it was for my other family members who attended, as well.”

Empowering? “Guilford was a transformative educational experience, where I developed as a student of the environment and of politics, and it was where I became fully human.”

He explains: “Guilford College can produce revolutionary agents of change. That’s what it does for those students who make the effort. You learn how to work from the inside out in order to effect meaningful change.” Bringing about meaningful change from the inside out is exactly what Josh is doing now in New Orleans.

When we caught up with him, we asked about a community meeting that had taken place recently in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a meeting designed to voice the concerns of the community toward a navigation lock project — that might expose residents to toxic waste — being planned by the Army Corps of Engineers. Was he at the meeting? “Oh, yes. I was part of a group who planned how best to voice the opposition.”

Between his sophomore and junior years, Josh went to Ecuador on a Guilford College ecological research adventure that included time on the Galapagos Islands. “We spent three weeks there assessing ecotourism politics. What does the word mean, what is the impact?”

Because of that trip, Josh recently went to Peru for a month, on his own. He stayed in hostels the whole time, and he now feels that he has “explored Ecuador and Peru more than I have my own country.”

He’s thirsty for knowledge of the world. Constantly seeking, he says. Plans after AmeriCorps involve graduate school, probably in environmental planning. “I want so much more — I want kids, I am endlessly seeking more knowledge, I want to change the world for the better.”

He already has.