What is Empty Bowls for the food shelf?
It is a grassroots effort to fight against local hunger. If you google search empty bowls, you will likely get many hits of empty bowls events near you.
How to do an Empty Bowls Fundraiser
You will see many places that come together and do HUGE empty bowls fundraisers. I have seen events with people throwing on the wheel at the event, live music, hundreds of bowls for sale, with soup being served in the clay bowls that was cooked by the school's culinary arts class, with a bake sale, and other activities! These events are amazing, and I would love to do one. I, however, have decided that simple is the friend of my sanity, and done is better than perfect!
Students in some of my classes create bowls. High school students can create a bowl using whatever method they choose, but for middle school, I have them all make drape mold bowls on top of other bowls. (This helps with uniformity, and quality control because I can take them through the steps since they have less clay experience.) Students create the drape molded bowl in one class period, take it off and smooth edges in the second class period, get it fired, and then glaze it in one more class period. After three class periods (plus downtime for firing) they have a nice looking bowl. I find that it really helps to have students think about glaze colors and bowl designs that they might see in adults homes, so that you don't get emoji's, hearts, with bright kids colors (this fits well with the standard where students have to consider their audience).
I have our fundraiser set up at a local coffee shop. We used to host one day where people had the option to purchase a bowl when they purchased soup, and the soup would be sold in the bowl (we use all food safe glazes), but then the coffee shop started saying that they didn't mind if people just wanted the bowl, without the soup. We sell our bowls for $5, but I have seen some for $10 a bowl of more. We also used to do one day, but families said they had a tough time getting there, so we extended the sale to one week. Since there wasn't live entertainment, it worked out. We do our sale for one week, close to Christmas (in case people want the bowls for gifts).
We have the local newspaper, sometimes the local TV station get the word out about the event. We also print posters for the school and the coffee shop and place the announcement on our school facebook page. People seem to enjoy the event, and typically most of the bowls sell. Ours is not huge, but we are able to take several hundred dollars to our local food shelf each winter, and the students feel great about that!
How about you, have you ever put on successful empty bowls event? What advice do you have for others wanting to try it out?
It is a grassroots effort to fight against local hunger. If you google search empty bowls, you will likely get many hits of empty bowls events near you.
How to do an Empty Bowls Fundraiser
You will see many places that come together and do HUGE empty bowls fundraisers. I have seen events with people throwing on the wheel at the event, live music, hundreds of bowls for sale, with soup being served in the clay bowls that was cooked by the school's culinary arts class, with a bake sale, and other activities! These events are amazing, and I would love to do one. I, however, have decided that simple is the friend of my sanity, and done is better than perfect!
Students in some of my classes create bowls. High school students can create a bowl using whatever method they choose, but for middle school, I have them all make drape mold bowls on top of other bowls. (This helps with uniformity, and quality control because I can take them through the steps since they have less clay experience.) Students create the drape molded bowl in one class period, take it off and smooth edges in the second class period, get it fired, and then glaze it in one more class period. After three class periods (plus downtime for firing) they have a nice looking bowl. I find that it really helps to have students think about glaze colors and bowl designs that they might see in adults homes, so that you don't get emoji's, hearts, with bright kids colors (this fits well with the standard where students have to consider their audience).
I have our fundraiser set up at a local coffee shop. We used to host one day where people had the option to purchase a bowl when they purchased soup, and the soup would be sold in the bowl (we use all food safe glazes), but then the coffee shop started saying that they didn't mind if people just wanted the bowl, without the soup. We sell our bowls for $5, but I have seen some for $10 a bowl of more. We also used to do one day, but families said they had a tough time getting there, so we extended the sale to one week. Since there wasn't live entertainment, it worked out. We do our sale for one week, close to Christmas (in case people want the bowls for gifts).
We have the local newspaper, sometimes the local TV station get the word out about the event. We also print posters for the school and the coffee shop and place the announcement on our school facebook page. People seem to enjoy the event, and typically most of the bowls sell. Ours is not huge, but we are able to take several hundred dollars to our local food shelf each winter, and the students feel great about that!
How about you, have you ever put on successful empty bowls event? What advice do you have for others wanting to try it out?
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