A Silent Auctionwill include works donated by some of the region's best artists.

Contact Carolyn Adams if you have something to donate. It doesn't have to be pottery. We are looking for other art forms and services. There is a donation box in the Southwest School of Art clay studio. You have until Feb. 17th to donate.

In 2011 we began a new tradition with the auction and had "Celebrity Bowls." Local celebrities glazed bowls provided by the guild. We have 2012 celebrities working hard on their bowls. Stay tune for more information.

There are many other ways you can help, including volunteering during the event. Both Guild members and local volunteer groups will team up for this wonderful event. Shifts happen thoughout the day on Sunday starting at 8:00 a.m. and ending at 4:00 p.m. Saturday has soup and bread pickup times available throughout the day. Soup servers, dishwashers, ticket takers, set up, tear down , bread and water servers and other positions available.

For more information about how your participation can help, please e-mail volunteer@samm.org.

For more information about the wonderful work that SAMMinistries does to help area families and the homeless, please visit their web site at www.samm.org.

Please join us March 3, 2012!

Members of the San Antonio Potters Guild held their first Empty Bowls event in November 2000 not too long after hearing about this worthy cause. That first year in San Antonio, the event was housed in the Chapel of the Southwest School of Art and Craft. Members remember it was pouring rain.

"We had no idea if anyone would even show up. We were amazed at the turnout -- we ran out of soup and bowls, but raised around $11,000.00 on that day."

Each year, the amount donated to charity has grown as Guild members have become more and more involved, sponsors have helped support the event through donations and the community has generously come to the event and gone home with hand-made bowls. Since that first year, the event has raised more than $100,000 to benefit SAMMinistries, one of the largest charities providing services to the homeless in San Antonio and the surrounding area.

In addition to the great community support for Empty Bowls, much of the credit should go to the enormous generosity of the many hardworking potters who have donated thousands of bowls and other handcrafted items for the Empty Bowls sale and silent auction.

Through this effort, the Guild -- and you and our many community supporters for the event -- make a regular donation to fight hunger each year.

• Empty Bowls is an international effort to raise funds for charities that support the hungry and homeless. It began in 1990 when a Michigan high school students and their teacher wanted to find a way to raise funds to support a food drive. Just one year later the concept developed into Empty Bowls and since that time the 501 (c) 3 organization has raised millions of dollars to combat hunger. (For more information about the effort visit www.emptybowls.net.) There are Empty Bowls events staged by ceramic artists all over Texas and the nation.
   
  
• The San Antonio Potters Guild's mission is to cultivate and nurture ceramic artists and collectors while at the same time celebrating and extending humanity's ten thousand-year heritage of fired clay. The membership is diverse, representing working potters, sculptural artists who work in clay, and students, as well as supporters of this field.
   
  
• SAMMinistries, an interfaith ministry dedicated to helping the homeless, was launched in 1983. The ministry assists an average of 400 individuals including 200 children every day of the year with emergency services, transitional and supportive housing as well as an after-care program. Last year the agency cared for more than 4,000 individuals and provided more than 169,000 bed nights of shelter and services to the area's homeless. Today SAMMinistries is supported by more than 175 churches and synagogues and over 7,100 volunteers.