 Laurel High School's Ceramic classes' Empty Bowls fundraiser is in the news! Check out the article from The Gazette here. Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Laurel High School, community unite to fill ‘Empty Bowls’ by Holly Nunn Staff Writer  Holly Nunn/The Gazette Eleventh-grader Angel Tillery, 16, of Laurel etches a design into a clay bowl, to be used as part of the Empty Bowls fundraiser. Tillery and other ceramics students made about 500 bowls, which will be given away to attendees at the April 20 event to benefit Elizabeth House food pantry and soup kitchen in Laurel. When Gerald Williams, 16, moved with his family to Laurel from Charles County last year, he said he noticed there were a lot of homeless people. “I knew [hunger] had to be an issue, because there were so many homeless people on the street,” he said. Williams, a junior at Laurel High School, is one of about 50 students using some of their required service learning hours to make a dent in hunger in the area, hosting a dinner April 20, dubbed Empty Bowls, to raise money for a Laurel soup kitchen. “A lot of times, service learning hours are done in such a way that [students] show up at a place and clean up a river or something, get their hours and leave,” said Rebecca Adams, a special education teacher and service learning coordinator at Laurel. “But I want to connect what they’ve learned [in the classroom] and apply that skill to the project.” So Adams recruited ceramics students to make about 500 bowls, which will be given to attendees at the dinner — which will cost $10 — to remind them that there are others in the area who go hungry, she said. The fundraiser is to benefit FISH of Laurel Inc., a nonprofit that manages Elizabeth House soup kitchen and food pantry. The soup kitchen feeds about 45 homeless people every day, and the food pantry provides assistance for about 132 families and individuals each month. Williams, who made about 10 bowls in ceramics class over the last month, said the work will pay off when they raise the funds. “[The bowls] symbolize that we care about homeless people being fed,” Williams said. If the school raises $5,000, as it is hoping to do, that would contribute significantly to the $60,000 yearly budget of FISH of Laurel, said Victor Exner, food pantry coordinator and vice president of the board of trustees. “It would be quite a help to us,” Exner said, though he said it was difficult to quantify how many people the funds would feed. Adams said she has organized similar events when she previously taught in Frederick County, but has not seen an event like Empty Bowls in the four years she has been teaching in Prince George’s County. According to Carol Plotnick, president of the board of directors at FISH of Laurel Inc., hunger is a problem in the city, though it is hard to quantify just how big the problem is. Statewide, she said, 12.5 percent of households struggle with hunger, meaning they do not know where their next meal is coming from. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that there are people in our area who struggle,” Plotnick said. The fundraiser is being catered by Baltimore-based Dish and Design Catering and Events — funded by a $1,000 grant from Disney Friends for Change — with help from the school’s food and nutrition class, which will be making desserts. Seniors in ceramics classes at the Laurel-Beltsville Senior Center are also contributing bowls for the dinner. Attendees will also receive free tickets to the school’s production of “Dracula.” “It’s really a community effort,” Adams said. hnunn@gazette.net © 2012 Post-Newsweek Media, Inc./Gazette.Net |