McALLEN — Magdalena Aguinaga sat at a table in the Radisson Hotel on Saturday afternoon, painting a ring of red hearts around a ceramic bowl at Food Bank RGV’s Empty Bowls Paint Party Kick-off.
Aguinaga had just started painting. Beside her, her son was adorning another bowl with arcs of clean-lined rainbows. At other tables, Aguinaga’s friends brushed on geometric designs and polka dots and stripes. More than one looked like watermelons split in two: splotchy green on the outside and red with little black ovals on the inside.
There were about 200 painters, Food Bank RGV CEO Libby Vaughan said. They’d painted about 60 bowls by lunchtime.
“And our goal is actually 300, so we’re running a little behind,” she said.
It’s good to paint a distinctive bowl, Aguinaga says. If you do, she says, you can go look for it at the annual Empty Bowls Luncheon and Silent Auction, which spreads awareness about food insecurity and raises funds for Food Bank RGV.
Do painters find their bowls?
“Not always,” Aguinaga says with a sarcastic smile. “We are such good painters, they go away fast.”
Many of Saturday’s painters are, Aguinaga said, close friends and frequent volunteers for local charities.
It certainly seemed more like charity fun than charity work. Music blared while painters laughed and gossiped and took selfies, exchanging hugs and cracking jokes
If Food Bank RGV is a food safety network, this is the social network it depends on.
It’s also, Aguinaga said, the social network she’s come to depend on: an assortment of friends and volunteers and sponsors that have turned into de facto family.
About 15 years ago, Aguinaga found herself in a tough situation: money was tight, her months-old son’s father was out of the picture, her family lived far away. She was alone, in need and ashamed.
“It’s embarrassing to say you don’t even have food to feed your own son,” she said.
Aguinaga turned to the foodbank. When she arrived, she found — literally — a sign: a poster from workforce solutions advertising a job opening. She didn’t get the gig, but her resume was added to the workforce solutions database and not long afterwards she got a call from a company.
Aguinaga did get that job, and she still works there, in addition to running her own small apiary and a laser engraving service. She gradually got involved with the food bank over the years.
“It’s when you hit rock bottom, God pulls you up and tells you that you’re not alone,” Aguinaga said. “And now I have so many friends. I’m not alone in this town anymore. And my son is growing up with family — food bank is family.”
That family, Aguinaga said, has become an integral part of her life.
“I am blessed to be surrounded by people who actually care about the community, who actually want to do good,” she said. “Many of the amazing women that are here are engaged in literacy, in fighting hunger, in fighting inequality.”
“I didn’t get the job, but luckily my resume got pulled into the workforce solutions database and I got a call from another company — the company that I still work for right now,” she said. “So honestly, it was the greatest blessing.”
Food Bank RGV is planning on expanding the social component of Empty Bowls, Vaughan said.
This year the food bank is planning on hosting two Empty Bowls Luncheons: a new one in Brownsville in July and the traditional one in McAllen in October.
“It’s kinda hard for the people down in the Lower Rio Grande Valley to come all the way up here for the event,” Vaughan said. “So we want them to be part of it, and know that they are part of our area. We’ve been serving the whole RGV for 37 years, and Brownsville’s an area that people don’t think we serve, even though we actually do. So we want to have a bigger presence in that area.”
Vaughan said that the jovial atmosphere at Saturday’s painting party is important to making the food bank’s mission a success.
“Who’s gonna come out if it’s not fun?” she said.
That mission, Vaughan said, is important, and the awareness spread by Empty Bowls is critical.
“The hunger people have, the food insecurity that’s going on right here in our own neighborhood,” she said. “It’s not somewhere else, not in a third-world country, we’re talking about what’s going on right here with us and our people.”
