Empty Bowls dinner slated to raise hunger awareness

BRADFORD, PA – The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will host the 10th 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 19 in the Mukaiyama University Room of the Frame-Westerberg Commons. Tickets are $10 and will be sold at the door. 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, associate dean of student affairs and director of career services, and chairwoman of the event, “The recent water crisis has helped us learn not to take anything for granted, whether it is a glass of clean water or the next hot meal. And the remarkable response of the Bradford community during the crisis shows that this is a place where people look out for one another.”

Over the past nine years, this popular Women’s History Month event has raised approximately $14,000 for the Friendship Table.

The event is a community-wide effort. Pitt-Bradford students, faculty and staff wove baskets at a Stress-Free Sunday event. The American Association of University Women spent a Saturday morning sewing the napkin sets. 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, W.R. Case and Sons, Metz Culinary Management, Miss Maggies, Anne Mormille, Pitt-Bradford’s Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity, Office of Community Engagement, Conference Services, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Division of Communication and the Arts, Division of Management and Education, Division of Physical and Computational Sciences, Staff Association, Student Affairs, Tops Friendly Markets, Wal-Mart, Women’s History Celebration committee, and Zippo Manufacturing.