Empty Bowls & Baskets Dinner Next Week

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will host the fifth annual Empty Bowls and Baskets Dinner of homemade soup and bread to raise awareness of the fight against hunger and to raise money for the Friendship Table.

The dinner will be held from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, March 18, in the Mukaiyama University Room in the Frame-Westerberg Commons. Tickets are $10 and will be sold at the door. Diners are invited to take home a handcrafted ceramic bowl, basket or hand-sewn cloth napkins as a reminder that someone else’s bowl might be empty.

According to Dr. Holly J. Spittler, associate dean of student affairs and chairwoman of the event, “The premise behind the dinner is to offer a simple meal of homemade soups and breads and a place at the table for all as a way to increase our awareness of the fight against hunger.” In the past five years, this popular Women’s History Month event has raised more than $5,000 for the Friendship Table.

“We would not have been able to do this without the help of our students, faculty and staff, and the many community volunteers who make soup, cookies or donated items,” she said. “They are all dedicated to making sure no one in our community goes hungry.”

The event is a community-wide effort. Pitt-Bradford students, faculty and staff, Bradford Manor residents, and volunteers wove baskets or painted ceramic bowls. The American Association of University Women spent a Saturday morning sewing the fabric napkins. Third-grade students from School Street Elementary and St. Bernard Elementary School, as well as third- and fourth-graders from the Learning Center and the Bradford Area Christian Academy, decorated placemats as part of a lesson about hunger. Campus and community volunteers made the soups and cookies.

The Empty Bowls Dinner was initiated in 1990 when a Michigan high school art teacher and his students sponsored the first dinner served in handmade bowls to benefit the cause. By the following year, the originators had developed the concept into Empty Bowls, a project to provide support for food banks, soup kitchens and other organizations that fight hunger. Since then, Empty Bowls events have been held throughout the world, and millions of dollars have been raised to combat hunger. For more information on the originators of the event, go to: www.emptybowls.net.

Other groups who contributed to the event are the Ray Austin of Austin Pattern Works, Diana’s Ceramic Heaven, Martie Geiger-Ho, Hog-Shed Pottery Studio, Elliott Hutten, Mary Jones, Metz and Associates, Miss Maggies, Betsy Matz, Parkview Supermarket, Pitt-Bradford’s Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity, Center for Leadership and Service, Division of Communication and the Arts, Empty Bowls and Baskets Steering Committee, Division of Management and Education, Pitt-Bradford Staff Association, Pitt-Bradford Student Affairs, TRiO Student Support Services Program at Pitt-Bradford, Denise Tarasovitch, Tops Friendly Markets, Walmart, WESB-1490 AM and the Women’s History Celebration committee.

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