By: Maranda Bargren

LO’T Focus Editor

“Empty Bowls is a Moline tradition that brings so many of our community members together for the common goal of ending hunger in our community.” Empty Bowls is a fun event where people of the community can come to the high school and socialize while eating soup. From this event, they can also receive a bowl made by the pottery department. Each participant must donate $5.

This year, NHS was able to raise $1,600, which will be going directly to the Riverbend Food Bank to aid our local community.

However, NHS had to overcome many obstacles in order to make Empty Bowls a success.

“Covid shut the event down for two years so we really had to start all over again,” says Mr. Joel Delp, the pottery teacher.

When they tried to host it in 2021, they couldn’t get enough restaurants to donate, so they had to cancel it. This year, they dealt with a similar issue. The Calling Committee contacted many businesses, yet many of them were still unable to donate.

“We had a list of almost 100 businesses; nearly all of them didn’t donate because the event was under different management and didn’t happen for a while,” says Graham Crippen, the Vice president of NHS, who was also in all 3 of the committees involved in the event.

In the end, NHS was able to receive some pastries from Hyvee as well as some soup from Culver’s, Fresh Thyme, and a few others. The rest of the soup had to be made somehow, and that was the primary issue that NHS had to solve in a short amount of time.

Ultimately, each of the senior members of NHS had to make their own soup in order to get the quantity they needed for the event. The members had to make the soups and bring them in crock pots, which were then each plugged in in the cafeteria and served from.

“Transporting the soup was an endeavor,” says Graham, “Students on the transportation committee drove their personal vehicles to restaurants and students’ houses to collect donations; some students even had 6 crock pots in the car at once!”

What makes the Empty Bowls of this year so different from prior years is that it was hosted by the National Honor Society. In previous years, Empty Bowls was hosted by the art department. However, the art teacher who had hosted it is now retired, and the National Honor Society, led by Sylvia Salinas and Lanae Harding, decided to keep the tradition.

Every year prior to the eve, Mr. Delp has his pottery classes create 1-2 bowls for their first project, and then he has leftovers from previous years, which gets them to around 300 bowls. He also hosts community bowl-making nights in the pottery studio at the school, where any members of the Moline community can come in and create bowls to be used in the event. He also has artists from the community donate professional bowls to be sold at the event.

“There was a hefty show out,” says Kirsten Schmidt, a senior who was involved in one of the bowl-making nights, which went from after school until about 7 or 8.