PUTNEY — This year's ninth annual Empty Bowls Dinner to benefit the Brattleboro Area Drop-In Center will take place on Saturday, Oct. 6, with seatings at 5 and 6:30 p.m. in the Landmark College dining hall.
For a $25 donation, guests will be served a simple, nutritious meal of soup, bread, cheese, apples, beverage, and dessert, and will enjoy live music.
Afterwards, guests are invited to keep the hand-crafted bowl from which they ate as a reminder of the many people who go hungry each day in our community and beyond.
Area businesses and restaurants contribute food, beverages, desserts and supplies, and local professional musicians provide entertainment.
All proceeds are donated to the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center, which has provided food, shelter and other essential resources to those in need, in Brattleboro and many surrounding towns since 1988.
The recent death of the organization's founder and director, Melinda Bussino, left many in the community reeling.
The organization's major fundraiser, the Empty Bowls Dinner, will be dedicated to the memory of Bussino and her tireless efforts on behalf of those in need.
“Melinda's passion for her work showed, and that energy flowed down to everyone who worked with her on the fundraiser,” said Lucie Fortier, Bussino's successor. “What a wonderful legacy she has left behind.”
“Melinda would often arrive slightly late to our Empty Bowls meetings, rushing from somewhere else, often from some distance, and always managing to sit down and immediately engage in the heart of what we were discussing,” said Christie Herbert, the president of the Empty Bowls planning committee.
“She had a remarkable combination of clarity, common sense, patience, and a razor-like focus on the needs of 'her' people,” Herbert said. “She could somehow hold all of them close to her heart as she deftly maneuvered through countless meetings, ours included.”
Empty Bowls is made possible by dozens of volunteers ranging from ceramics artists who begin making bowls in the spring, to high-school students who help serve and clean up on the night of the dinner.
The annual, worldwide event is sponsored regionally by Brattleboro Clayworks (a potters' cooperative and ceramics resource center) and Landmark College, as well as Brattleboro Savings and Loan, New Chapter, and The Trust Company of Vermont.
The dramatic rise in food prices in recent months has meant that the Drop In Center has seen a tremendous increase in requests for food and other services.
More than 7,100 individuals rely on the Drop In Center, and of these, many are working poor - people who are fully employed, but whose wages do not cover their basic living expenses, organizers write.
Half of all the people who are served by the Drop In Center are children and senior citizens. The Brattleboro Area Drop In Center also operates an overflow shelter in the winter at the First Baptist Church on Main Street, in conjunction with Morningside Shelter.
Tickets are $25 and are on sale now at Everyone's Books (25 Elliot St.) and the Shoe Tree (135 Main St.) in Brattleboro, and Offerings Jewelry (10 Kimball Hill Rd.) in Putney. Tickets can be reserved by calling 800-852-4286, ext. 108.
More information can found at www.brattleborodropin.org or www.brattleboroclayworks.com, or on Facebook.