Growing up Blessings: Claire

Blessings in a Backpack has helped a million kids since its incorporation in 2008. Dedicated volunteers who have given countless hours to purchase food, pack, and distribute—so the kids in their communities have enough food on the weekends.

For some volunteers, Blessings is all they have ever known.

Some of Claire Howard’s earliest memories are helping her dad, Brian, shop each Thursday for the Blessings program in her small town of Pomeroy, Ohio. In those days, her job was to get noodles and popcorn off the grocery store shelf. She knew just how many items of each she needed to fill the Blessings bags at Meigs Primary School. They would meet her mom at the elementary school and pack items into bags—in 2nd grade, she became the official bag tier. “I still tie the bags each week. I am the ultimate tier! I can have full conversations because muscle memory kicks in after all these years of tying Blessings bags!”

Last year, Claire was voted the high school student with the most school spirit. Her list of achievements in high school is lengthy: she is the President of Meig’s High School Student Council, in National Honor Society, and the Drum Major of the marching band. Claire says she knew some of the kids she went to school with received the Blessings bags she helped pack. She had elementary and middle school friends whose only meals were the ones provided at the school cafeteria each day, so she knew how important the weekend food bags were to her classmates.

Claire says her experience at Blessings, and the volunteering her parents have instilled in her through their example, is influencing her future. She plans on majoring in Child and Family Studies, which would enable her to help kids and their families in medical facilities. “Working with the Blessings program opened my eyes a little to just how much I love helping, I realized I could mix my love for helping and working with kids to a career path.”