Thank You for Supporting Empty Bowls
Our 2025 Empty Bowls Fundraiser has come to a close, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone who attended, volunteered, sponsored, and supported this meaningful event. Together, we helped provide meals, hygiene items, and case management services for neighbors in need throughout our community.
Empty Bowls is our major fall fundraiser, and its impact reaches far beyond one day. Each bowl shared and each conversation had helps remind us that hunger still exists—and that together, we can make a difference.
Stay tuned for details about our next Empty Bowls event. Be sure to follow us on social media and check back here for updates, ways to get involved, and future opportunities to help fill empty bowls and hearts.
“Empty Bowls” is an international project to fight hunger, personalized by artists and art organizations on a community level. The core purpose of Empty Bowls is to raise funds for local food charities and educate people about issues of poverty and hunger in their community.
Empty Bowls started in the early 1990s when Lisa Blackburn and John Hartom decided to do something to counteract the negative news about hunger and poverty in their town in Michigan. John, a high-school ceramics teacher, challenged his students to throw 120 bowls which they used at the first Empty Bowls luncheon held at the school, charging $5 per bowl to raise funds to fight hunger. The event was a success and right away people began duplicating it all over the country and, eventually, all over the world.
Thirty years later, empty bowls are filled all around the world to help fight hunger. “It's not a lack of food, the problem is food distribution.” – John Hartom