Students of Riverview Charter School are not just learning about world hunger. They're doing something about it.
For the fourth year in a row, the school is participating in a global grass-roots project called Empty Bowls, which raises awareness of world hunger and collects money to feed the hungry.
Students and teachers at the school each created their own ceramic bowl, which will be put on display at the school on Oct. 23. Instead of selling the bowls, the school asks parents to make donations to take their children's bowls home. Those donations, along with the profits from auction items, will be used to purchase 30,000 meals through the international hunger relief organization Stop Hunger Now. The cost for those meals is $8,500.
The dishes will symbolize bowls that sit empty around the world. Guests will be served a small portion of soup to represent what some less fortunate people consider a feast. And that soup will be made by the students with vegetables and herbs planted and harvested by students.
Stop Hunger will deliver food to the school Wednesday morning. Students, teachers and volunteers from the community will work together throughout the day to measure, pour, weigh and package the meals. Those meals will then go back on the Stop Hunger truck and will be sent to an orphanage in Honduras.
"It's a really powerful day," Riverview curriculum leader AnnMarie Bowden said. "You leave kind of in tears, and it's emotional watching these little, tiny beings that have to stand up in a chair because they can't reach the funnel to pour the rice in because they're so tiny, working alongside a fifth-grader or an eighth-grader. ... Our goal in all of it is that they walk away more engaged citizens who are ready to contribute to the world, not just to themselves."
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