Full Hearts Fill Empty Bowls

By: Kaitlyn Neese

She was 25, scared and cold in Phoenix, Arizona with no one to turn to. She looked up at the huge banner with the bright red words “St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance” slapped across it and wondered how she ended up here. The answer to that question is a bad boyfriend. A lazy boyfriend who did not want to work, a boyfriend that she should have left months earlier. They had no money for food, and she had no one to turn to. So, she found herself inside the food bank where people showed her the love and kindness she was searching for.

These days Emillie Dombrowski can be found in Auburn, Alabama planning the 8th annual Empty Bowls project scheduled for March 27, 2021. Empty Bowls is an international grassroots effort to fight hunger, originally created by The Imagine Render Group in 1991.

“It is supposed to be symbolic of what a hungry or poor person would come into a soup kitchen and get: soup, bread and water,” Dombrowski said.

Attendees of the Empty Bowls event will select a handmade ceramic bowl created by local potters and a take-home soup, with the idea that this soup will be their only meal of the day. What makes it special to her is that all proceeds from this event are donated to the Food Bank of East Alabama.

Her dreams are for Empty Bowls to grow every year. “I found out that one ticket and one bowl will make 11 meals for somebody,” she said. “If we make $5,000, think of how many meals that will give them.”

Dombrowski grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where she lived with her mother, step father, and little sister. She spent her afternoons at her grandparents because her mom was an ER nurse. Her step father came into their lives when she was 5, and her little sister was born when she was 11. “In the beginning it was tough because I felt like they were all stealing my mother away from me,” she said.

As the girls got older, they grew closer because she played the mother figure role while their mother was at work. “I would get her ready, take her to school, then we would go to our grandparent’s house together,” she said.

Dombrowski’s mother showed her what it was to not only be a feminist, but a woman with passion for helping others. Her mother did work with community health, including running a large health clinic for migrant workers who would come over from Mexico.

“Wednesday nights we would be with salvation army, Sundays we would be in this big church room, Tuesdays we would go into the schools and help our mom, and that is how I fell in love with the giving back to the community,” she said.

Love pulled her from Arizona to a college town in Alabama. She met her wife, Ashley in Atlanta, but she had a lot of mental health problems and that scared her, so she went back to Arizona and started dating again, but she could never get Ashley out of her mind.

Four years later, Dombrowski reached out to her again, to which Ashley replied, “I’ve been waiting for you.” They decided to move to Auburn, because that’s where Ashley’s family is located, and they thought it would be good for her mental health to be close to family.

Dombrowski started teaching ceramics in Auburn, and she would go to different art events and that is where she met Sara Hand Custer, the Cultural Arts Director at the Jan Dempsey Community Arts Center.

She kept in touch with her and kept seeing her posts about a new job opening, but she never thought she was good enough for it. “I messaged her and said this is my resume, and I don’t meet all of your qualifications, but I might as well try,” she said.

Dombrowski is now the Art Education Specialist for the JDCAC, where she plans Empty Bowls and other community events such as Auburn City Fest. “I have been so impressed with Emillie’s passion for not only Empty Bowls, but this community as a whole,” said Custer.

“Emmy-Bug is so bubbly and sweet,” gushed Caitlin Koterba, a recreation leader at the JDCAC. “But, don’t get it twisted. She is also very hardworking and organized.”

Dombrowski rolled her eyes and replied, “It’s all a façade. My life is a complete mess, my car is a mess, my house is a mess, but I do try to keep my work organized.”

A typical work day for Dombrowski includes reading emails from caterers, working on publicity, printing out fliers and posters and coordinating with the ceramic studio tech, Amy. “I start planning Empty Bowls in December, but recently, I’ve noticed that I need to start earlier,” she said.

Empty Bowls is a personal project for Dombrowski, because she knows what it is like to be on the other side of that table, hungry and needing help. She also thinks it is a progression of her community work. “In seventh grade, I was making bowls to donate and now I am planning my own event,” she explained.

“I love that it goes to our local food bank, and we can see that effect locally. It’s going to people that are our neighbors and we walk around so oblivious to how close people with food insecurities are to us.”