For having hope is like having the last Truffula seed, or an old abandoned shell, and looking up at the sky and seeing stars that make you laugh.
—The Little Prince, 75th Anniversary Edition, and The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
As CEO/ReImaginator for 360° Nation and Chief Encouragement Officer of our affiliated pro bono social impact enterprise, GoodWorks 360° Foundation, I was delighted to have the opportunity to get better acquainted with Hope Blecher, Founder and Executive Director of Hope’s Compass, established to create opportunities for community unity to grow one tiny, mighty, beautiful step at a time through meaningful civic engagement. Learn more as you enjoy my recent interview with Hope below.
We’d like to hear about your personal story BEFORE launching Hope’s Compass.
Professionally, I am Dr. Hope Sara Blecher Croney. For my first degree, I graduated Cook College, now part of Rutgers University. For my MA degree, I graduated from Kean College, now Kean University. For my Ed.D. degree, I graduated from Walden University.
One of the reasons I began and completed this degree was because of my dad. He had accumulated many postgraduate credits; however, because those didn’t result in a degree, the credits were pieces of paper certificates. I knew when I enrolled that I would do what it took to finish. It took a year more than I had originally planned because my dad got sick, my daughter was preparing for her Bas Mitzvah, and I was contemplating a divorce. However, four months before he passed away, I graduated with that earned degree. My parents encouraged me to attend the graduation ceremony in Minnesota, and I did, along with my oldest brother, my young son, and two friends.
I’ve taught K through college-level courses/students. I’ve worked as a teacher, a literacy coach, an administrator, an adjunct professor, and a professional development provider. I vividly recall the two staff in-service workshops that I was assigned to attend. While walking through the door, I was told not to take any of the handouts. I had been assigned to these sessions because, as the elementary ESL teacher, there was no other place to put me.
This experience drives me to strive to include multiple touch points, something that each person may connect with.
I’ve had bosses tell me that my creativity was overwhelming and that they didn’t know what to do with me and my ideas. I can say that I’ve had one boss who had my back and who let me fly.
I was born in Minnesota, but my immediate family, which includes my mom, dad, and two brothers, each born in different states. I was brought up in a Jewish home. I attended public school from K-12th grade in the same town. During those years, my favorite class was the weekly art class, K-6, and the arts elective in middle school and high school.
In 1984, my mom and I went to South Africa to visit her surviving cousin. Three years later, in my parents’ home in NJ, I would marry a man from South Africa. In 2011, we divorced. In 2014, on a lawn in Parksville, NY, I would remarry a guy that I knew from my hometown. As of today, we are still married. When we married, I had hoped our blended family would be like the Brady Bunch. Sadly, of the four step children, one step daughter passed from a drug overdose, one daughter stole from us and eventually went into rehab and is no longer in contact, one daughter no longer talks to her dad because of a difference of opinion about money, and the son is occasionally in touch via text messages. The son and daughter from my first marriage are constants in our lives. Separately, they are in touch with me on a regular basis and will communicate with their stepfather, my husband, too. He tells me that I have a unique relationship with my kids. It is something I am proud of and would fight for.
Hope’s Compass came to be because of the encouragement of my husband and my kids. I felt that I was up against a lot of red tape when what I wanted to do was make a difference. Knowing I didn’t have the personal funds to be philanthropic, but that I could free up some time to volunteer, I did that. Hearing some people talk about the kids who couldn’t read, and blaming them for it, and for hanging out on the streets instead of doing something productive, I chose to create small projects through tiny, mighty, beautiful steps.
Marching to my own drum with decreasing negative feelings and increasing positive feelings is a work in progress. Thank you to those who see Hope and embrace Hope.
Tell us about Hope’s Compass and the inspiration behind it.
The inspiration behind Hope’s Compass is wandering with wonder. I look and take in what I see and what I feel. Those become part of my thoughts and mull around inside of me. Then, at a moment, a project idea is birthed. During my career, I have been told that I am too much, that I have too many ideas, and that I am unfocused. Yet, I see the connections between the parts. I see the tangents as part of and not as being off course. Hope’s Compass is my symbol to go and explore and to gather, and know that there is a direction somewhere out there. Behind the scenes, or at its heart, this nonprofit is about bringing projects into the community as a way to demonstrate what can be done, to counter naysayers, and to give a place for our multilingual and multigenerational neighbors, residents, and visitors to meet, interact, and share a smile.
The kernel, the heart of Hope’s Compass, is the person who feels left out, who feels that their artwork, their story, has no one who will look and listen.
What’s unique about your nonprofit?
Although I am the founder of Hope’s Compass, I did it to bring people together for a shared experience. There are multiple points of entry into the projects and a series of programs. What’s unique is that someone can volunteer to organize the books in the display, and then stop to read one, and then engage in a chat with another attendee, and then form a new camaraderie. Someone comes to see the artwork, someone receives a hug after sharing their poetry, someone comes for the music, and someone else comes for the quiet repose. Because I have been an educator for four decades, I am very cognizant of having something for people to see, to hear, to touch, to smell, and to taste. The programs within the projects can either be seen as steps, as building blocks, or attended to once.
This is a homegrown nonprofit. I started it with under $1000 donated by my mom before she became ill on Easter Sunday, 2024. That she survived and is cheering me onwards with Hope’s Compass keeps my heart in it.
When did you launch, and what’s been the biggest challenge?
Hope’s Compass was launched in October 2023. I started it because my career changed during and subsequent to the pandemic. I started it because I had ideas for tiny, beautiful collaborative projects, yet I didn’t have my own funds to pay out of pocket. I sought advice and became a component fund of The Community Foundation of Orange and Sullivan Counties, cfosny.org.
My biggest challenge has been fundraising via social media platforms. As a writer, I have a narrative style. I ask questions to learn about the backstory. So my posts are too wordy and not straight to the point. On many occasions, during video calls and in-person meetings, people have commented that my enthusiasm is energizing. I’ve been told that people can feel how passionate I am about the projects.
Any noteworthy surprises or ‘A-ha’ Moments along the way?
During the weekends of the Voices of Survivors exhibit and series of programs, I had an A-ha moment. I noticed people returning again and again, the same people. After I struck up a conversation with them, I asked why they kept coming back. They told me that they felt safe coming here, to be with other Jewish and non-Jewish people, who wanted to listen and talk and not hurt them.
What about the impact/outcomes of your movement so far?
During 2024, I created and brought to life a project titled Voices of Survivors: Inspiring Hope, Sanctuary, Compassion, and Community. It began as the educational piece to satisfy my commitment to planting a daffodil garden as part of the worldwide Daffodil Project, daffodilproject.net. Over 9 weekends, people came through the doors of two local museums, and what I witnessed was beautiful. People hugged, exchanged contact information, made plans to come again and again, exchanged stories, and listened. They shared histories, stories, photographs, poetry, and recollections.
The impact has been multigenerational storytelling through paintings, poetry, prose, and photography.
The outcome has been people collaborating and connecting with each other and reaching out to me to find out how the exhibit can continue, and how to share the messaging. People can take a virtual tour of Voices of Survivors by watching the videos at my newly created Hope’s Compass YouTube channel.
What’s the next big thing/challenge for Hope’s Compass?
The next big thing for Hope’s Compass is planting 6000 daffodils in commemoration of the children who perished in the Holocaust. Each bulb represents a child. When each bulb blossoms, it represents life. This fall, there will be two gardens, each with 3000 daffodil bulbs that need to be planted by hand. The challenge is to get people to show up to plant, to cheer on the people who will be planting, and to cultivate the site year after year. The challenge, financially, is to raise funds to keep hosting the Honoring Survivors and Their Rescuers Through the Generations exhibit; that is the second stage of Voices of Survivors.
Funding is required for the basics of the two rooms that I’ve been able to access, such as cleaning up the space that was once two classrooms in the basement of a building. Funding is needed to purchase display easels, table cloths, frames, a copier, and paper. Funding is needed for arts materials for people to use as they reflect and respond to the exhibit. Funding is needed to pay the speakers, musicians, artists, and authors an honorarium.
Integral to hearing the stories shared by the survivors is capturing the essence and being able to have that available for others to embrace, to envelop themselves in. Recording their stories in their own words, having monitors, speakers, and a microphone requires funding.
Unlike other organizations that sit at tables with no ideas, struggling to brainstorm for their next activity, that is not a stumbling block for me. The speed bump is twofold: it is identifying and being able to afford an ADA-compliant location to permanently house Voices/Honoring, and to be able to fund this for at least 5 to 10 years.
Unfortunately, at about the 10-year mark, the eyewitnesses, the first generation survivors, will have passed away. It is to keep their memories alive and to have their stories as learning and life experiences for others that I am going to keep trying, to keep having hope.
As a humanitarian, what’s non-negotiable for you?
This is not the Hope Show; I do what I do as a professional and a volunteer with an eye and an outreach for collaboration. Interpersonal collaboration is non-negotiable for me. Hope’s Compass doesn’t exist in a bubble. While I have plenty of my own ideas, with ebbs and flows, I am profoundly aware of how interpersonal collaborations and cooperative actions are what bring the projects to life.
How can our readers learn more about and support your Hope’s Compass?
For information about current and past projects, there is a website, HopesCompass.org I have brought together facets of Hope at DrHopesHub.org, where people can see North, South, East, and West with nonprofit Hope, Educator Hope, Artist Hope, and Author (words) Hope.
Share with us your favorite quote related to all that you do.
Dare I try to emulate you, Dennis? There is no one quote. The quotes are a mash-up from The Little Prince and The Lorax, two characters and two books that I have come to see as connected.
Hope speaks through line drawings, and trees that have no tongues, next to people she has just met, and those known for days and decades. Hope is at once courageous and persistent, farseeing and takes responsibilities seriously, and applies discipline to taking care of a project (his planet), enjoying the sensation of a job well done. For having hope is like having the last Truffula seed, or an old abandoned shell, and looking up at the sky and seeing stars that make you laugh.
–The Little Prince, 75th Anniversary Edition, and The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
BONUS QUESTION: What’s one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?
When I was a freshman in college, the English 101 teacher marked up one of my papers. She had red-penned it, and I was told to rewrite it. This happened again and again. That I have gone on to become a teacher, administrator, adjunct professor, and published author instead of failing that class might surprise people.
The second thing is that my dad had a dark room in our basement, a makeshift corner in the concrete basement of our square home in NJ. It was there that he and I would develop black and white film. That was our bond.
