Youth Farm and Market sponsors all-day
community meal

Youth Farm and Market Project, a neighborhood-based youth, gardening and arts initiative, will sponsor an all-day drop-in community meal called Empty Bowls to explore issues of hunger in our neighborhoods Friday, Oct. 20 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Pillsbury House, 3501 Chicago Avenue South.

Since its small beginnings in 1990, Empty Bowls has become an international grassroots project to raise funds to feed people. John Hartom and Lisa Blackburn, two high school art teachers at Lahser High School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., realized that their annual food drive was attracting few donations. They asked their students to make pottery bowls to be used at a luncheon for the school staff. Every guest chose a bowl, ate a simple meal of donated soup and bread and made a generous donation to their local food shelf. Everyone kept his or her bowl as a reminder of all the empty bowls in their own community and throughout the world.

Youth Farm and Market Project is hosting its 2nd annual Empty Bowl event, inviting everyone to come to either South Minneapolis or the West Side of St. Paul on Oct. 19 and 20 to choose a bowl from among the 1,000 bowls made by local potters and Youth Farmers, eat your choice of soup and bread made by Youth Farmers or donated by local businesses, and make a generous free-will donation to support Youth Farm and Market Project.

Youth Farm and Market Project was started in 1995 to create a set of programs for urban young people—centered on growing, cooking, eating, and selling their own community-garden produce, and helping them nurture healthy relationships with their families, their communities and the earth around them. In their 11th year, Youth Farm works with over 300 9- to 13-year-old and 25 14- to 18-year-old youth in three neighborhoods —Powderhorn and Lyndale in South Minneapolis, and the West Side in St. Paul.

This Empty Bowl event will help to support YFMP’s Own Lunch Program, which besides feeding all of the youth in the program, provides an important opportunity for youth to learn about cooking, nutrition, healthy meals, and using the ingredients they grow in the meals they cook.
For more information, the Youth Farm web site is www.youthfarm.net.