Ceramic bowl fundraiser highlights Middle Georgia food insecurity

People lined up inside Middle Georgia State University’s College of Arts and Letters Tuesday afternoon to pick up colorful, irregularly shaped ceramic bowls and get a bowl of soup.

Tuesday’s gathering was the first Empty Bowls fundraiser, which was organized by Middle Georgia State University and the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank to raise money to combat food insecurity.

Kathy McCollum, president and CEO of the food bank, said the empty bowls act as a reminder of the hardships of food insecurity.

Nearly 117,000 people in Middle Georgia are food insecure, McCollum said, meaning they don’t have access to sufficient amounts of food. One in six Middle Georgians are food insecure, and 1 in 4 children in the region face food insecurity.

For every dollar raised, the food bank is able to feed eight people, she said.

The Trump administration recently canceled the U.S. Agriculture Department’s annual food insecurity report after rescinding hundreds of millions in national funding for food banks back in March.

“We’ve certainly seen ups and downs in federal funding levels through the years,” she said. “To date, this year has been particularly challenging for us.”

Empty bowl fundraisers have been done by food banks around the state, McCollum said.

Billy Wooten, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, initially brought the idea up to professor Kimberly Riner before approaching the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank.

Starting in January, the ceramics professor and three of her classes made nearly 300 bowls that students from across the arts college painted.

The fundraiser is part of a service-learning project, Wooten said, which lets students use their skills to get real-world experience through a number of community partnerships.

Working to combat food insecurity and housing has been a “pet project” of his, he told attendees.

“[Students] learned about hunger in the Macon region, and that really got them pumped up and into the project,” Wooten said.

Sagan Thompson, a senior at MGA, volunteered to help students paint their bowls. He said handing out the bowls was like running an orphanage and seeing all the kids get adopted — a “full-circle” moment.

He said making the bowls helped bring together professors and students from across the college. The bowls were a product of a lot of hard work and determination, he added.

“A lot of the people who made the bowls are back here today seeing them be taken, so it’s a lot of satisfaction going around,” he said.

Wooten said he’s already spoken about bringing the fundraiser back next year with even more bowls, especially with the new studio being built at the school.