Make a donation

Ozias Leduc: Boy With Bread (National Gallery of Canada)

How to Get a Bowl or Make a Donation

These handmade stoneware bowls are available throughout the year at the
Riverguild in Perth. Riverguild is a co-operative of local artists
and makers of fine craft, located on the main street of town.
These bowls make meaningful gifts for local
organizations, corporate clients and
as holiday offerings to family
and friends.
Housewarmings
Perfect.


Bowls ready for firing in the bisque kiln	A typical salt glazed "empty bowl"

Empty Bowls distributes more than $10,000 each year to address
food scarcity among children and youth in the Perth area.
We have never failed to meet this goal
since the project began in 2002.

100% of donations for these bowls goes to programs
administered by these three charitable agencies:

The Perth and District Food Bank
The YAK Youth Centre
Food For Thought
(breakfast programs in Lanark County schools)

Make a donation to Empty Bowls
If you can't make it to Perth but want to help out you can send us a cheque payable to
" Empty Bowls, Perth "
Mail to
Empty Bowls, c/o J. Seaton, RR 7, Perth, Ontario K7H 3C9

Please note: Empty Bowls is not a registered charity and cannot offer tax receipts.
All donations, however, are administered by the three "grantees" described
below and all are registered charities.

Thanks !

EMAIL: info@emptybowls.ca

photo ~ Tracy Wall

2010 Recipients

Food For Thought

Food For Thought is a breakfast program serving children in elementary schools throughout Lanark County. It is largely parent run and chronically short of funds despite the alarming trend toward increased child poverty in virtually every region of Canada.

The YAK Youth Centre

Perth is a small town in Eastern Ontario about an hour’s drive from Ottawa. It has its share of affluence but like other Canadian towns and cities poverty is not unknown. A report released in Perth in January 2003 found a shocking level of homelessness and couch-surfing among young people in Lanark County. The YAK Youth Centre is a drop-in facility which closes at 9:30 at night so it can't offer shelter. But it does offer a daily supper program which is a significant help and it is entirely paid for by Empty Bowls donations!

The Perth Food Bank

Those who work at the Food Bank know all too well that at the end of any given month more and more families - and these are working families for the most part - must choose between rent and food. Over 40% of the nearly 4,000 clients they help each year are children! It's hard to believe and hard to accept, but there it is. Empty Bowls is one of the largest single donors to the Perth Food Bank year after year.

Additional donations will also be made in 2010 to these three
nutrition programs for children outside the Perth area:
The Lieutenant Governor's Aboriginal Summer Literacy Camps
administered by Frontier College across Northern Ontario

Escuela de Sam, Guatemala
administered by a Perth based NGO, The Guatemala Stove Project

FUNDING GUIDELINES AND PHILOSOPHY

The amount of money raised by Empty Bowls is small in relation to the need in our community. To address this concern funding priorities have been developed in consultation with an advisory group comprised of one representative from each of the organizations currently in receipt of funds from Empty Bowls. The criteria for funding priorities reflect the mission of the project and the principles upon which it is founded.

Grantees must be registered food-related charities that are direct - service providers to their constituents. Priority will be given to groups in Perth and Eastern Ontario. Funding to programs operating elsewhere in Canada and abroad are also eligible depending on the level of donations from year to year.
Priority is given to long-term programs over ad hoc emergency aid or special holiday meals
Since food distribution is not in itself a solution to poverty and hunger, Empty Bowls in Perth favours organizations that also work to eradicate poverty and combat hunger by improving the reach and effectiveness of other resources available in the community such as child nutrition programs

Similarly, Empty Bowls in Perth looks for organizations which are proactive in assisting those in our community who experience hunger by, for example, publishing information from time to time in the local press, or providing counselling or training aimed at longer term solutions.
Empty Bowls in Perth holds firm to the principle of inclusiveness and diversity and looks to organisations that value and abide by similar principles both in the manner in which they carry out their charitable activities and the governance of their organization.
Organizations that proselytize or ask their clients or members to participate in any religious or political activity, and by so doing give the appearance of excluding members of the community, would not be considered sufficiently inclusive to meet the criteria.

Jackie Seaton, Potter

Ben Hodson, Illustrator

Website by Dunn Sohn Designs