Empty Bowls

15 million of the world's children die of starvation each year.

Professional and amateur potters participating in the Empty Bowls project spent recent months making some 400 ceramic bowls. They included children and elderly individuals who took a pottery class at the Cape Area Family Resource Center and contributed 25 of the bowls.

Soup and dessert were served to everyone who attended the Nov. 5 fund-raiser at the Salvation Army in Cape Girardeau. Everyone also was entitled to choose one of the bowls to keep.

Proceeds are being donated to the Salvation Army, the Red Star Food Pantry and the Bootheel Food Bank in Sikeston, Mo. The event raised more than $3,000.

The dietetics program at Southeast Missouri State University, Panera restaurant and Sysco Foods by way of Grace Cafe all donated to the cause.

The Empty Bowls project started in Michigan. Communities around the country can use the name and concept as long as the money they raise is used to fight hunger. The Empty Bowls project in Madison, Wis., sent a dab of clay to Cape Gir¿ardeau to help get the local project started.

In the United States, the richest country on earth and where obesity is epidemic, people rarely die of starvation. But in 2004 the U.S. Census Bureau classified 4.4 million households as "hungry." The Empty Bowls project is one effort at changing those statistics.