Dining Services dishes up community service:

Harvard is dishing up another helping of community service with its annual Pie in the Sky effort. On Sunday (Nov. 24), more than 50 staff members and their families from Dining Services and the Office of Human Resources (OHR) will bake and box 1,750 pies. The massive volunteer effort supports Community Servings, which sells the pies and will garner $35,000 for the Harvard effort alone toward its programs that provide food for people homebound with HIV and AIDS.

Dining Services (HUDS) has participated in Pie in the Sky for the last nine years, and has been joined by members of OHR for the last two. HUDS solicited donations of the groceries and paper goods needed to make the 1,750 pecan, pumpkin and sweet potato pies from Costa Fruit and Produce, H.P. Hood, Perkins Paper, Paul Marks, and US Foodservice.

On Sunday morning, volunteers will assemble at HUDS Culinary Support Group (80 JFK St.) beginning at 7:30 a.m., working until all the pies are baked, cooled, wrapped, and boxed.

“I love this program,” says HUDS executive director, Ted Mayer. “It sets the perfect tone of community and giving for the upcoming holiday.” HUDS is specially marking this year’s effort in memory of Michael Miller, the former executive chef who died in June 2002, and who brought Pie in the Sky to Harvard. “Every one of us will be thinking of Michael as we work,” says Mayer. “His spirit was infectious, and I’m sure we’ll feel it Sunday.”

The Harvard Events and Information Center in Holyoke Center is among the locations selling pies on Wednesday (Nov. 27) from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. For additional Pie in the Sky distribution locations, please visit Community Servings on the Web at www.pieinthesky.org.