The Empty Bowls fundraising program is coming back to the Valley, thanks to efforts from Mount Si High School’s cheer team.

Empty Bowls is a nationwide movement to help fund local food banks. The fundraiser lets participants buy unique pottery bowls, each hand-made by students in the Snoqualmie Valley School District, for their meal at a community dinner event. Local restaurants donate the food and proceeds from the dinner are donated to the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank in North Bend.

Janice Wintermyer, Assistant Cheer Coach at Mount Si High School, said the team wanted to bring back the event, which started in 2012, after it had not been held in the Valley in recent years.

“Ruth Huschle, who is the art teacher (at Twin Falls Middle School) along with Heidi Dukich, who runs the (Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank) here, they put this event on,” Wintermyer said. “They did it for two or three years, then it sort of fell by the wayside.”

Wintermyer thought bringing the event back would be a good way to get the cheer team involved with community service as well as to help the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank.

“This year at Mount Si Cheer, we really wanted to refocus our program back on community service, and giving back to the community and making our presence a little more well known,” she said.

“Being really good friends with Ruth, I knew about the project and said this would be a great way for us to bring it back and have this be our community service. I pitched it to the other coach and she was on board and we kind of just took it and ran with it.”

Wintermyer and 20 members of the cheer team went to Twin Falls Middle School Oct. 14 to work on creating bowls in Huschle’s studio. Huschle, along with Chief Kanim Middle School art teacher Julie Lagace and Mount Si High School’s art teacher Ann Heideman, brought the program to their classes and had the art students make bowls as well.

“Our building will generate probably 75 bowls or more,” Huschle said. “We hope to have probably 200-plus bowls that we will be able to have at the event.”

Along with the art teachers, Wintermyer has also received support from Laura Tarp, culinary arts teacher at Mount Si.

“Laura Tarp has offered all of her help, students, bread and whatever we need,” Wintermyer said.

“She is really great and so we are putting everything together right now.”

To make the dishes for serving that food, students will use clay to craft bowls, as the cheerleaders did last month.

“They used the slab roller and rolled clay flat and then they are using a mold and wrapping clay around that (to make the bowl shape) and personalizing it by adding on different shapes or forms, putting in texture, drawing into the surface of the clay,” Huschle said.

While a date hasn’t been set for the dinner, Wintermyer is working to get local businesses and volunteers on board with the program before the end of the year, with plans to host the event in mid-January at Mount Si High School.

“Hopefully the community will come out,” Huschle said. “In the past it was a really great event. The food bank is so important for our community and they do a wonderful job.”

For more information on the Empty Bowls project, visit www.snoqualmievalleyemptybowls.weebly.com.

Students work on the finishing touches of their creations for the 2017 Empty Bowls event. Evan Pappas/Staff Photo

Cheerleaders Jenny McCall and Sammy Kremer work on the details of their bowl designs.

Evan Pappas/Staff Photo Elizabeth Ward and Taccoa Herman prepare their clay to be formed into a bowl shape.

Evan Pappas/Staff Photo Elizabeth Ward and Taccoa Herman prepare their clay to be formed into a bowl shape.