PUTNEY — The 11th annual Empty Bowls dinner is set for Saturday, Oct. 11, at Landmark College. Now, with this fundraising tradition entering its second decade, organizers took a few moments to look back at how the event has grown and to note what keeps so many hosting and attending the dinner.
In 2003, a small group of potters met at Brattleboro Clayworks to figure out how to launch an Empty Bowls dinner in Southern Vermont. Inspired by a group of high school students in the Midwest who had used the metaphor of an empty bowl to create a fundraiser addressing hunger and poverty, the group set out to solicit donations of ceramic bowls from local potters and area restaurants.
They sold tickets that would allow people to come to a community dinner, select a handcrafted bowl, enjoy a healthy meal - with soup filling their bowls - listen to live music, visit with friends, and take their bowls home: a memento.
Organizers said that dinner was a great success not only for raising vital funds for the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center, but also for bringing together people of all ages with a common goal.
Madeline Conley was 11 when she first volunteered for the dinner, then held at St. Michael's Church in Brattleboro.
“A friend and I washed all 400 bowls by hand in two giant sinks in the kitchen. I worked alongside not just friends my age, but people much older and younger than me as well,” she said.
As word of the event spread, a larger venue was needed. By 2013, fully 1,200 donated ceramic bowls were sent through the industrial dishwasher at Landmark College.
Funds raised increased from $2,500 in 2003 to $25,000 last year, making it the Drop In Center's biggest annual fundraiser.
And what started out as a dinner organized and carried out by 10 to 15 volunteers has become a well organized event backed by more than 100 volunteers. Food is donated by 12 local restaurants.
Nancy Braus, owner of Everyone's Books in Brattleboro - one of the ticket outlets for the dinner - said she has attended the event every year. Not only do she and her husband, Rich Geidel, come to enjoy the dinner, they also invite their employees to join them.
As a downtown merchant, Braus said, she sees with her own eyes the need for the services of the Drop In Center.
“It would be hard to live without it. Brattleboro has an economic diversity, and poverty in this community is a long-term problem. Thank goodness that there are a lot of people with the energy and creativity to put on this event to help their neighbors out,” she explained.
Laurie and Greg Massing travel from Boston each year for the dinner. They say Empty Bowls is a time “to mark the changing of the seasons, to share in the strong sense of community, to help those less fortunate than ourselves, and of course, for the bowls. The display of beautiful, handmade pottery takes our breath away, and each year it gets harder to select the 'just-right' bowl, with so many to choose from."
Rupa Cousins, a healing arts practitioner and teacher, has also attended the event annually since 2003. She said she's donated to the Drop In Center in various ways over the years.
“I love the Empty Bowls event because it raises both awareness and money for the center. It is a demonstration of true community helping others while celebrating each other and the Drop In Center. I love the evening, the spirit of community and how it all works,” she said.
Those many people who work on the event year after year list other reasons for returning.
Elizabeth Ungerleider said she loves seeing all of the high school students volunteering each year, and “knowing that this event helps make them aware that they can make a difference in their own community.”
Bonnie Stearns, on the committee since its first year, said the draw for her is in “coming together with others to create a successful, enjoyable community experience which benefits so many, not only beneficiaries of the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center. We all benefit from working together on a community project like this.”
Conley, now an adult living in Portland, Maine, said that coming home for Empty Bowls is almost as important to her as coming home for Christmas:
“I come to this event, in part, to see many of the people most important to me in this community. Especially magical is the mosaic of bowls laid out and getting to hold them and feel them before deciding on the perfect bowl.”