Empty Bowls event helps homeless residents for over 30 years
Mesa Community College’s Empty Bowls fundraising event returned for another year to support the Paz de Cristo Community Center, where every $10 purchase of a one-of-a-kind ceramic bowl comes with a meal and feeds over 20 people.
Every time one of the $10 bowls is sold, 24 homeless people are fed, according to Paz de Cristo’s Executive Director Jackie Shelley, at the Empty Bowls event on the Southern and Dobson campus on Nov. 13.
Attendees also received tickets for each bowl they bought to get their own bowl of soup, which happened this year to be coconut curry, supplied by Pita Jungle.
The event has been consistent over the past 30 years, according to Shelley, so the funds from the event feed thousands of people every time.
“Every year, this event makes about $10,000 dollars for us. I’d have to do the math, but that’s well over 24,000 meals,” she stated.
Paz de Cristo is a non-profit organization that feeds hundreds of people in need every night, with MCC’s donation to help continue the charity’s work.
“Our mission statement is more than a meal. We feed, clothe and empower our neighbors in need,” explained Shelly. “We cooked dinner from scratch every night of the year, about 300 meals every night, serving homeless people and people who are just trying to make ends meet,” she said.
Almost 10 tables were filled to the brim with bowls of different sizes, colors, designs, and glazes. This year the MCC Ceramics Department had a new kiln to help add to their diverse collection.
“We got two new downdrafts. So, they produce a different sort of glaze effect on your pottery pieces,” said Laura Elder, the senior ceramics lab technician. “A lot of what we’ve been doing as fillers because they’re so small kilns and it’s a very special firing,” she said.
The bowls specially made in their new downdraft kilns had a different coloring, according to the lab technician.
“The copper reds. Those are the deep red colors or they’ll have certain spots where they’re white, and that’s where they oxidize instead of reduced. You’ll get the purples in some of those,” Elder described.
Elder explained that they wanted to do something different every year because they wanted to impress new people as part of the many yearly visitors.
The crowd enjoyed donating to the cause and got started on buying presents for the holiday season, a sentiment Paz de Cristo’s executive director agreed with.
“People come and do their Christmas shopping and they look forward to this event every year, but we’ve also had some first-time visitors,” Shelley explained.
Many attendees bought multiple bowls and handed out their extra food tickets to hungry students around campus.
“What better way to spend an afternoon or a morning seeing beautiful ceramics and helping people get fed?” said Luke Watson, an MCC art adjunct faculty and volunteer at the event.
