MOFGA’s Empty Bowl Supper to Benefit El Salvador Committee a Success

Thanks to help and donations from several community members and organizations, an Empty Bowl Supper held on April 24 raised over $1000 for MOFGA’s El Salvador Committee and, at the same time, brought over 100 people together to enjoy good food, music and comraderie.

This was the committee’s second Empty Bowl Supper and is destined to become an annual event. Those who attended the supper got to choose from dozens of gorgeous bowls donated by area potters (taking the bowls home with them after the dinner as a reminder of hunger in the world). They ate soup made from ingredients donated by MOFGA farmers and cooked by Cleonice Mediterranean Bistro in Ellsworth, with rice and beans served on the side. Bread, desserts, organic coffee (grown by farmers in our sistering communities in El Salvador), juice and teas rounded out the meal.

Russ Libby, executive director of MOFGA, welcomed the crowd, noting that while events worldwide can make people lose heart, events like the Empty Bowl Supper, where people came together for common goals, were what really mattered.

Heather Garrold, a MOFGA member who traveled to El Salvador with a delegation from Maine in 2002, and chauffeured a group of Salvadoran delegates around Maine in 2003, told of the importance of connections. She noted, for example, her surveyor-father’s amazement at the tenuous legal titles that Salvadoran farmers had over their land--just one of many issues that the El Salvador Committee may address.

Ben Jenkins, who recently finished a Peace Corps term in a more remote part of El Salvador, said that farmers in the region where he worked were very interested in the connection that the Carasque region had with MOFGA and in the possibility of getting crops certified as organic. This could be an important factor in making farms in the area economically sustainable.

Participants dined to the lively and sometimes political keyboard and drumming music of Brian Stewart and Leonore Hilddbrandt of Solstice, who also donated their talents.

The supper was cosponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast, which provided not just the facility for the event but several bowls, publicity, and enthusiastic help with set-up and clean-up; and by the Belfast Co-op Store, which provided substantial amounts of food.

The MOFGA-El Salvador Committee expresses its thanks to the following:

Potters

Home Coop--David Warington
Liza Fisher--Watering Cove Pottery
Unity Pond Pottery
Keith Tenney
Nancy Button, Union
Susan Dickson-Smith, Proper Clay Pottery
Michael Remsen Porcelain Studio, Rockport
Monroe Saltworks, Monroe
Margorie Walsh
Portland Pottery
Charley Grosjean, Hog Bay Pottery
Camden Hills Regional High School art students

Food

Belfast Co-op Store
Cleonice Mediterranean Bistro, Ellsworth
John Edward’s Health Food Store, Ellsworth
King Hill Farm
Happy Town Farm

Cups

Graves, Camden

Set-up and Clean-up

Unitarian Universalist Church members, Belfast (Thanks for the facility, too.)
Susan Pierce, Northport

Music Brian Stewart and Lenore Hilddbrandt, Solstice

Organization

MOFGA staff

All proceeds from the Empty Bowl Supper will benefit MOFGA’s sistering relationship with two similar organizations in El Salvador that promote sustainable, organic agriculture. For more information about the MOFGA-El Salvador Committee’s work, including a planned delegation from Maine to El Salvador in January 2005, please contact Paul and Karen Volckhausen at pkvolckhausen@panax.com or 667-9212.