National Honors Society (NHS) will be hosting Empty Bowls, a charity event that will donate to the Westford Food Pantry and senior center, on March 17. This event will take place from 5-9 PM in the cafeteria.

NHS is a club for students to give back to their community and serve others, but also make friends. NHS gives students the opportunity to feel like they are a part of a community; you will never feel like a bowl in a china shop with them.

“NHS is a great organization for kids who want to join because they want a group to work with and learn how to work as a group to change the world,” club advisor Gil Fuhr said

NHS hosts a range of events that benefit the community from disk golf to Empty Bowls. The goal of these events is to have fun, make good relationships with others, and to make charity events feel special.

“There is so much hard work that goes behind planning events,” Macha said. “Knowing that our hard work is benefiting others is truly rewarding. Service has been a huge part of my life, and I think everyone should make it a priority to contribute to the community.”

At Empty Bowls, NHS will provide a handmade and decorated bowl made by a member of NHS. These bowls will have a raffle ticket inside of it that can be entered into one of the many raffle baskets. There will also be soup, karaoke, and presentations.

“Empty Bowls provides an opportunity for the community to unite and connect together, while embracing the many acts of service performed by NHS members,” senior representative Isha Macha said. “It is a fun event filled with music, joy, amazing food, and fun raffle prizes.”

Many members of NHS has put countless hours to plan and execute this charity even. They each handmade and decorated two or three bowls, and made presentations for the event. 

While the current NHS members have put in so much work, previous NHS members have also worked very hard on this event.

This event usually takes place every year but has not in two years due to COVID. The previous members of NHS did copious amounts of work but they will never get to see the outcome.

“It has been a bunch of work this year,” Fuhr said. “It’s funny because this year’s kids don’t really know the work that was done two years ago. And [the kids from two years ago] will never know what the result of their work was.”

While previous NHS members contributed much of their time and energy into this event, current NHS members have worked very hard as well.

“There is so much hard work that goes behind planning events,” Macha said. “Knowing that our hard work is benefiting others is truly rewarding. Service has been a huge part of my life, and I think everyone should make it a priority to contribute to the community.”

Although NHS members from two years ago do not get to experience Empty Bowls and be proud of it, Fuhr says many of the current NHS members often do not get the recognition they deserve for all their work.

In addition to not getting the recognition they deserve, Fuhr says they usually do not feel like they can be proud of their work.

“In the past it’s been, you know the common opinion that if you do service, you should be humble about it,” Fuhr said. “Which is true, but that doesn’t also mean you can’t share it to encourage other people to join.”

Fuhr says that events like these give NHS members a chance to be proud of all their work and show others how hard they work.

“You know, we have pep rallies for athletes, and we have, like, a prom for people. But we also want to give them a chance to celebrate the service,” Fuhr said.