Empty Bowls and Baskets dinner to raise hunger awareness

Pitt-Bradford will host the 11th 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. March 17 in the Mukaiyama University Room of the Frame-Westerberg Commons.  For admission to the dinner, a donation of $10 is suggested. Diners are invited to take home a handcrafted basket, ceramic bowl or handmade cloth napkin set, as a reminder that someone else's bowl might be empty.

According to Dr. Holly J. Spittler, chairperson of Empty Bowls and Baskets, “Even though the event is run on a “shoe-string budget”, we attribute its great success to the generosity and overwhelming support we receive from the campus and Bradford community.”

Over the past ten years, this popular Women's History Month event has raised approximately $16,000 for the Friendship Table.

The event is a community-wide effort. Pitt-Bradford students, faculty and staff wove baskets and painted ceramic bowls at a Stress-Free Sunday sponsored by the Office of Community Engagement. The American Association of University Women spent a Saturday morning sewing the napkin sets and making cookies. Bradford Area High School students created ceramic bowls. Third-grade students from School Street Elementary, St. Bernard 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.

The Empty Bowls and Baskets steering committee would like to thank the American Association of University Women, Bradford Area High School ceramics students and Scott Mealy, Samila Sosic , Adryona Hernandez, Metz Culinary Management, Anne Mormile, Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, Office of Community Engagement, Circle K International service club, Conference Services, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Division of Communication and the Arts, Division of Management and Education, Pat Donahue, Diana Lawton, CNB Bank, Division of Physical and Computational Sciences, Staff Association, Student Affairs, Theta Sigma Delta, Tin Ceiling Gift Shoppe, Tops Friendly Markets, Wal-Mart and the Women's History Celebration committee.