Roeper Students Combat Hunger With Empty Bowls Event

The Bloomfield Hills-based and Birmingham-based Roeper School will host its 10th annual Empty Bowls event on Dec. 18 to benefit Lighthouse Services of Oakland County.

Themed "Give Your Bowl a Face" in 2012, Roeper expects more than 300 students, teachers and parents to attend and participate in the Empty Bowls program. This year's bowls will be created and decorated by Roeper fourth and fifth graders.

The Empty Bowls program was started in 1990 at Bloomfield Hills' Lahser High School. There, art teachers were trying to help students searching for a way to raise funds to support a local food drive.

What evolved was a class project to make ceramic bowls for a fundraising meal. Guests were invited to keep the bowl as a reminder of hunger throughout the world.

By the following year, the concept had evolved into Empty Bowls, a project to provide support for food banks, soup kitchens and other organizations that fight hunger.

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This year's event marks the beginning of a new tradition at Roeper, schools spokeswoman Carri Hammers said. In 2011, Roeper hosted its first Roeper Empty Bowls Ice Cream Social, made possible by Cold Stone Creamery in Royal Oak.

This year, Roeper students will also visit Lighthouse Services of Oakland County to see how the funds they're raising is helping others. This year's Empty Bowls event at Roeper is supported by Rovin Ceramics of Ann Arbor, who is donating clay to area Empty Bowls events.