All photos by Just Harvest volunteer Patrick Bruener.
On the evening of October 22, over 400 guests gathered at the Omni William Penn Hotel for the 26th Annual Harvest Celebration Dinner. It was the highest attendance we’d had at our yearly signature fundraiser in a decade. Together, they and other contributors helped Just Harvest raise over $33,000 – a new record! – for our work to end hunger and poverty in Allegheny County.
It was a diverse and energized crowd of long-time supporters and new faces too. Among those in attendance were District Justice Judge Hugh McGough, Bill Bartlett of Action United, Mim Seidel of the Chatham University Food Studies Program, Tom Hoffman of Clean Water Action, Albert Ramirez of the Congressional Hunger Center, Lisa Scales of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Dawn Plummer of the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council, Barney Oursler of Pittsburgh United, and Fred Redmond of the United Steelworkers.
Grow Pittsburgh received the Seeds of Justice Award for their innovative work promoting urban agriculture as a means to fight hunger in the city. Their executive director Julie Butcher Pezzino, board member Kathryn Heidemann, and members of their team were on hand to accept the award. You can read her stirring remarks here.
The keynote speaker was British-born journalist, author, and poverty expert Sasha Abramsky. He spoke with great insight and passion about poverty in America in recent decades – the history and relative wisdom of our different policy approaches to dealing with it (or not, as was often the case).
Abramsky illustrated his knowledgeable and eloquent narrative with stories of the people and places he’s encountered in his travels around America over the past decade, people who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own:
- the woman in Northern California who in 2002 was running a food pantry “`because for my neighbors, the month is longer than the paycheck’”;
- the diabetic Wal-Mart worker with cancer, heart problems, and other ailments who in 2011 told Sasha “when I can afford it I buy an 88-cent TV dinner from Wal-Mart, and when I can’t afford it, I go to bed hungry”;
- the 200 homeless students at a North Las Vegas high school;
- the men – steel workers and aluminum foundry workers – who lost their jobs and pensions and were reduced to tears and charity.
[Stay tuned to our blog during November for a series on Poverty in America based on his remarks!]
The fundraising gurus Blacktie Pittsburgh were in attendance and their thoughtful account and pictures of the event can be found here.
Didn’t make it to the fundraiser but want to donate to our efforts? You can!
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