PITTSBORO - Empty bowls have long been a symbol of hunger and the need for food. As increasing numbers of Orange and Chatham residents struggle with new economic challenges, it's timely that Chatham County glass artist Leslie Fesperman, a few months ago decided to launch a new citizens' initiative to raise money for food for Chatham residents in need.

The Empty Bowls project will benefit the food pantry at Chatham Out Reach Alliance (CORA), a nonprofit that has been helping local residents for 19 years.

"I've wanted to launch a project like this for years, ever since a potter friend told me about other Empty Bowls projects around the country," Fesperman said. "I truly hope this will become an annual event in Chatham and will grow over the years."

At Fesperman's urging, Chatham potters and other citizens have been donating hand-crafted bowls to Fesperman's gallery, Fusions, in downtown Pittsboro for several months. The campaign will culminate in a special event organized by the Pittsboro Merchants' Association on its regular downtown "First Sunday" celebration this Sunday.

Local contributions, expected to number more than 100 bowls, will be for sale under a tent in the parking lot outside Capital Bank on Hillsborough Street near the Chatham Courthouse. The bowls, which will be filled with soup and accompanied by bread contributed by Chatham Marketplace, will be on sale for $15 each between 1 and 4 p.m. All the proceeds will be donated to the CORA Food Pantry. On the same day Chatham residents will participate in their 20th annual Hunger Walk in Pittsboro, seeking to raise a record amount of additional funding for CORA.

"Everyone who participates by donating an empty bowl is encouraged to think about the desperate needs of people who have no food at all," said Marci Whittaker, CORA's executive director. "There are a growing number of desperately hungry people here in Chatham and in Orange, also in other North Carolina counties and all over America. Hunger is right here at home, not just in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world."

Whittaker, who served as a volunteer before becoming CORA's first salaried employee a year ago, added that CORA's Food Pantry has experienced a huge increase in demand in recent months, and is "just overwhelmed" as a small organization staffed primarily by volunteers.

"We are 70 percent ahead of where we were last year in terms of demand," she said. "The surge started in April and May of this year, when we began to have more than 1,000 requests for bags of groceries each month."

That steep rise in need comes as no surprise to the staff of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Services Food Pantry, which has served Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents for 45 years. Like its Chatham County counterpart, the IFC pantry is facing unprecedented demands for emergency food. According to Community Services Director Kristin LaVergne, the agency gave out bags of groceries to more clients in September than in any previous month in its history -- a total of 1,186. A year ago, in September of 2007, she said, the agency gave free groceries to only 864 clients.

In Hillsborough, the Orange Congregations in Mission (OCIM) Food Pantry, run by the Rev. Sharon Freeland and supported and staffed by 40 churches in northern Orange County, also recently faced its highest demand for food in September. Kat Stagner, OCIM's manager of client services, said her agency first noticed an increase in requests for food assistance in April of this year.

"A significant reason for the new demand was the high price of gas and the increased price of groceries," she said.

Stagner said that in September 443 clients asked OCIM for help with groceries, compared to 265 clients in September of 2007.

Directors of all three nonprofit agencies expect the current upward surge in demand -- not only for food, but also for help with housing costs, utility bills, clothing and health care -- to continue. All three organizations, as a result, are making special efforts to rearrange their schedules and staffing to secure additional donations of food and money from the Orange and Chatham communities and also to recruit new volunteers.

Chapel Hill's Inter-Faith Council began as an all-volunteer organization in 1963. It has long operated the Community House Kitchen on West Rosemary Street, which serves three hot meals a day, seven days a week, to those in need.

CORA, like the Inter-faith Council, started as an all-volunteer nonprofit organization when it was launched in 1989.

All three agencies report the same thing: Times are getting harder for more and more people.

"People's lives in general have become more complicated -- there are so many double whammies these days," said Lavergne, who has worked as community services director at IFC since 1994. "Everybody wants nice things, the house, the husband. The wife, the kids. Money is what's valued in this society. It puts people in a tough spot. People are simply having to work harder to make ends meet."