Claire Bloom

I retired from the United States Navy in 1998 after having served my final tour as the first woman to be the second-in-command of the USS Constitution, the U.S. Navy’s 200-year old, three-masted sailing ship. Re-entering the civilian world, I began a career in business and education.

After living abroad, my husband and I returned to New Hampshire and I became an active volunteer, started a knitting group and joined a book group. One week, we were discussing a book that was set in a highly impoverished area of New England. One of the book group members – a teacher in the local school system – told us that there were children in my own community who went without food between the free lunch they received in school on Friday and the free breakfast they received in school on Monday.

From the instant I heard her say that, I knew that I could not know this and continue in my life doing nothing about it. I was 64 years old at the time. I confirmed with the local school district personnel that this was in fact a problem and investigated programs in effect throughout the country.

I determined that the best solution was to place bags of food directly in the hands of those children most at risk. In October 2011, we delivered the first 19 bags of food to local children in the elementary schools of Dover, NH. We are now feeding 900 children a week in 30 towns and expanding into California. Our program, End 68 Hours of Hunger, puts food in the hands of these children so that they can succeed in school.

They receive the food in special backpacks when they leave school on Friday. The children bring them back on Mondays and look forward to them being refilled each Friday.

It may seem like a daunting task, but it started small. My entire plan was just to feed the kids in Dover. That wasn’t daunting. If it was 45 kids, I could do it all by myself. The growth was very step-by-step-by-step. It is possible for one person, by putting one foot in front of another and working slowly methodically and carefully, to do an amazing thing.

My advice to folks who are searching for purpose is to open their eyes, be open to the possibility that there is something that needs to be done and get together with folks equally motivated. Look for where there’s a need and see what you can do to meet it.

(Claire Bloom was honored as an Encore.org Purpose Prize Fellow in 2013.)