At St. Sylvester Catholic Church in Brentwood, teenagers will begin preparing for Super Bowl Sunday tonight by fasting.

It's not to give the Steelers a spiritual edge -- they've done this every Super Bowl Eve for a decade. Tomorrow, with youth from more than 10,000 churches nationwide they will collect money after services for the Souper Bowl of Caring. Parishioners are asked for $1. All of the money goes to charities that the young people choose.

"They love it. Some of them hesitate at first because of the fasting, but they are always amazed at how easy it is," said Suzanne Maloney, the youth minister.

The 15 young people typically raise $1,500 to $2,000 from pledges and offerings put into the soup bowls after Mass. This year the money will be split between the Brentwood Food Pantry, a parish fund for people with emergency needs and to Catholic Relief Services for work in Peru.

Pennsylvania has more participants than any other state, said the Rev. Brad Smith, Souper Bowl founder and a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Last year about 1,300 Pennsylvania congregations and schools raised more than $300,000. The Souper Bowl of Caring raised $4 million in 2005, and about $28 million since it began 1990.

The idea came from a prayer he offered on Super Bowl Sunday 1988, as a seminarian-intern at a church in Columbia, S.C.: "Lord, as we enjoy this Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those who are without even a bowl of soup to eat."

The homonym ate at him through the rest of seminary. He conceived the idea of teens asking people to give $1 to feed the hungry that day, and giving all of the money to local charities. Churches are the dominant participants. But other faith groups are welcome and some public schools take collections. All that's required is to take the collection, give it away and report the total to www.souperbowl.org or 1-800-358-SOUP.

At Park Place AME Church in Homestead, Marion Morton is thrilled that this year's collection will go to a sister African Methodist Episcopal Church in hurricane-devasted Mississippi.

"Usually we've given it to shelters and things like that, but this year it came on my heart because our church has been helping" Gulf Coast churches, said Ms. Morton, who works with the Young People's Division of the missionary organization at Park Place. Her wish became reality last week, when she attended a missionary convention in Cincinnati and met her counterpart from a church in Gulfport.

At. St. Patrick Catholic Church in Canonsburg, the youth group has seen the difference their Souper Bowl collection makes, said Pat Waskowiak, a volunteer youth minister. All donations go to the local Meals on Wheels.

After their first collection of $2,600 in 1998, the program added another meal to the schedule. Later collections enabled them to add fresh fruit to the meals.

Her group makes a retreat of it, fasting from the first collection at Saturday night Mass, and spending the night at the church doing a service project.

Because of changes at the parish there was talk of discontinuing the retreat this year.

"It was the kids who said we have to do this. They love fasting, they love to do service," she said.