Four hundred residents from Roslindale, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, and other Boston neighborhoods gathered at the Roslindale Substation on Washington Street on March 22 to participate in the annual Empty Bowls event. Organized by art studios Create and JP Clay in partnership with the Hyde Park Food Coop and the Food Access Volunteers of Roslindale (FAVOR), the annual fundraiser brought community members together to address food insecurity through fundraising and sharing food supplied from local restaurants.

Over the course of the afternoon, 100 community members entered the hall at a time, and after checking in, picked a bowl made from one of Create’s or JP Clay’s artists and visited different stations, where they could sample 14 local restaurants’ foods, including soups, breads and desserts.

Each shift opened with remarks from the organizers, who introduced attendees to the cause and thanked participants for their donations, while reinforcing the theme of the event.

“We like to promote healthy foods and do our best to serve our community,” noted the Hyde Park Food Coop’s Ricardo Henry, as he kicked off the first shift of the night. At the start of the second shift, Clayton Cleaver enthusiastically told the crowd “We love FAVOR and the Hyde Park Food Coop for bringing everyone together!” to reinforce the community-driven mood of the event.

Volunteers from FAVOR and the Hyde Park Food Coop took turns serving community members. Some of them were once visitors to previous Empty Bowls events but were inspired to volunteer for future years, such as Roslindale resident Kirsty Russo.

“I attended as a participant [previously] and I wanted to be more involved at a local level, so I volunteered this year,” Russo explained. Before her shift, Russo picked up a bowl and enjoyed soup provided by one the volunteers. She explained that volunteers are randomly assigned to one of the tables to serve food to community members. “This is a great way to know more community members,” said Russo. “This event helps fill peoples’ bellies.”

While the global Empty Bowls movement began in 1990, the initial Empty Bowls in Roslindale started in 2020 to bring community members together during the COVID-19 pandemic and help restaurants reach customers when they were closed due to restrictions. After the positive reception from the initial events, area restaurants now look forward to participating each year, explained the Hyde Park Food Popup’s Rebecca Riley.

“Restaurants always reach out to us,” Riley explained. “They can’t wait to bring their buckets of food to share. Also, when they see us in their restaurants, they always ask us, ‘When’s Empty Bowls coming?’” she continued. “Empty Bowls brings together a smorgasbord of culture,” notes Empty Bowls event organizer Cathy Bosch of Roslindale. “We have Caribbean, Indian, Japanese and other dishes available to suit the neighborhood,” added fellow organizer Cheryl Rosenberg.

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Returning attendees’ positive experiences lead them to bring friends or family to future events, such as Jamaica Plain’s Nora Bloch, who invited her friend Margaret Schroeder to attend this year’s event. “I like the great energy and great cause of this event,” explained Schroeder. “Also, I like the bowl I picked,” with a green exterior and images of a forest etched in it, she added. “I have collected over a dozen bowls, and I have a large one to carry all the smaller ones,” explained Bloch.

The bowls attendees take home are designed to help remind them of the event and serve as a functional piece of art, an intention of the program, according to Create.

This year’s event sold all 400 available seats and raised $21,853 to support food access in Roslindale and Hyde Park. While there are already plans for Empty Bowls to happen next year, Rosenberg is thinking of other ways to expand the event to address food insecurity in the communities.

“We’re thinking of having a mini-Empty Bowls in the fall or in Hyde Park,” she explained. “Today’s event coincides with the end of winter warming. We think having an event in the fall with squash and other foods will help tie into the harvest season,” she added.

Learn more about the Empty Bowls program at https://tinyurl.com/ynv6u6jt