- March 10, 2025
Founder Marci Bobbitt hopes to raise $20,000 for Halifax Urban Ministries through the fifth-annual Empty Bowls dinner event, Dec. 7.
BY MATT MENCARINI | STAFF WRITER
If everything goes the way Marci Bobbitt hopes, 2,000 pounds of clay and about 125 pints of glaze will, like magic, transform into close to $20,000 for local charity.
Now in its fifth year, the Empty Bowls nonprofit dinner event, founded by Bobbitt, who lives in Ormond Beach but teaches art at Mainland High School, benefits Halifax Urban Ministries. In its first year, the event raised $5,600. But this year, Bobbit says, that number has already been surpassed by sponsors alone.
The proceeds from the event, which includes dinner and a silent auction, will benefit two of the ministry's food programs.
“Though we hear rumblings that the economy is recovering, the need in our community is great,” said Halifax Urban Ministries Community Relations Director Mark Geallis. “The need (in our) Feed the Family program has grown by 50%.”
Feed the Family provides meal packages, enough to feed four for a week, to families living below the poverty line.
HUM also runs a hot food program, which serves 300 to 400 meals per day.
The proceeds from one $15 bowl purchase (which includes dinner, drinks and dessert), Geallis said, can provide 150 lunches to residents, or supply a family of four with groceries for two weeks, thanks to partnerships.
Demand was so high for the 2011 event that Bobbitt increased bowl production this year from 850 to 1,000, with the help of local schools, including Ormond Beach Middle School and Pathways Elementary's fourth-grade class.
“The first year it was us (Mainland), and DeLand High contributed a few (bowls),” Bobbitt said. “Now, we’re up to 11 schools."
The program has also doubled its restaurant sponsors.
Over the course of the year, schools chip in to make the bowls. Bobbitt even has past Mainland graduates, like Krystal Smith, stop by the school to spin clay.
And for Smith, anyway, it doesn't take long to turn two pounds of clay into something bowl-like. After she's done molding, the clay is cured, glazed and painted, and dozens of these finished products are stocked in Bobbitt's Mainland art room closet, ready to be sent to the cafeteria for washing.
Some bowls even look like they were professionally done, because some were. The ones crafted by the elementary-schoolers also look the part.
Despite a bowl's creator, though, all will be sold, eaten from and taken home as a reminder of all the empty bowls around the world.
The restaurant sponsors provide the food, Geallis said, and there are about 15 restaurants donating five to 15 gallons of soup. The Mainland Culinary Arts Academy takes care of the dining service.
D.B. Pickles, 400 S. Nova Rd., and Olive Garden, 880 S. Atlantic Ave., are two Ormond Beach restaurants on Bobbitt's sponsor list.
Other sponsors, like Cobb Cole, Florida Power and Light, Regions Bank and Turner Partners, provide funds for the materials so all the proceeds can go directly to HUM.
