By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Student potters from Bowling Green High School are throwing themselves into helping the Brown Bag Food Project.
Art students created more than 100 soup bowls that will be sold to diners attending the “Artists vs. Hunger” – The Empty Soup Bowl Fundraiser, Saturday, March 25 from noon to 3 p.m. at Simpson Garden Park. The BGSU School of Art Clay Club is also contributing several dozen bowls.
The cost is $25 for all-you-eat soup and a hand-thrown bowl or $10 just for soup. Click for tickets.
There will also be a bake sale, kids crafts, and more than 25 raffle and silent auction items.
This is the second “Artist Vs. Hunger” fundraiser. The BGSU Clay Club initiated the first which was held in spring, 2019. The hope was to make it an annual event, but COVID-19 put the kibosh on a return engagement. Now with the pandemic abated, Brown Bag is bringing back the fundraiser.
[RELATED: Student potters filled with enthusiasm for Empty Soup Bowl Fundraiser]
“We thought it would be nice to have different people participating,” said Amy Holland.
So, Brown Bag reached out to the high school Art Department.
Art teacher Regina Hilton said she and the students were happy to participate.
It shows students that what they make with their hands can be useful. “It makes a difference that they’re not just making something for themselves but doing something for the community.”
Those bowls, Peg Holland, secretary of the Brown Bag Board, said, will be filled with home made soup. Board members and others are cooking up about a dozen different varieties of soup, and she is baking the bread. Diners will have the option of using muffin tins so they and get samples of a half-dozen soups at a time.
The raffle and silent auction items include “bark boxes,” with treats for dogs, a year’s worth of smoothies from Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a grill from Home Depot, and other items donated by local businesses. Grounds for Thought will provide coffee.
Debbie De Steno and Matthew Thacker from Herbie and the Love Bugs will perform during the event. And the music will continue when The Scottish Mile performs later Saturday night at Howard’s Club H. The band will donate the cover charge and accept donations for Brown Bag.
The fundraiser comes as the need for Brown Bag’s services are increasing.
Founded in late 2015, Brown Bag provides emergency food assistance.
Peg Holland recalls when they would have several cars show up to pick up food. Now on the three days the service is open they have several dozen vehicles.
Last year, Amy Holland said, they served 3,330 families.
Last month alone, Peg Holland said, they served 315 families that included 1,003 individuals. The first quarter of the year, she said, tends to have less demand because people are getting tax refunds and, in the past couple years, they have benefited from extended SNAP benefits and government aid, that is now gone.
She expects demand to pick up in April.
Tight economic times are also being felt by Brown Bag. Donations overall are down.
[RELATED: Brown Bag reaching out to help more people in the face of rising prices & shortages]
Hygiene items, Amy Holland said, are always needed. Campus groups, including sororities, have helped by sponsoring collection drives focused specifically on these needs.
The supply of food has odd quirks. There’s no canned corn, one of the most popular items, on the shelves currently.
And chickpeas, which are popular with international clients, are in short supply as is rice.
Brown Bag dd not hold its house-to-house collection drive on MLK Jr. Day this year. It was hard to get volunteers to trudge around town in winter weather, and what was collected was often unusable – badly dented cans, food past its use date, even jars of peanut butter that had been opened and had a spoonful taken out.
Not only can Brown Bag not distribute those items, but then they must discard them.
A particular need right now, they said, was people to deliver food. Brown Bag had a grant that paid for Door Dash deliveries, but that has expired.
Though volunteers sign up for an hour of service, the deliveries most often just take a few minutes, Peg Holland said.
“It seems like so far this year our donations are down,” she added.
“Things are tight for people,” Amy Holland said. “We’re looking for every grant opportunity we can find. We’re good at finding it if we need it.””
