The Pies For Prevention Thanksgiving Bake is now available across North America. This project supports the work of Jewish organization Sharsheret's Ovarian Cancer Program
Seven years back, Sisters Sharon Wieder and Adeena Sussman came to a decision to bake Thanksgiving desserts in order to raise up funds in memories of their mother Stephanie Sussman, 63, surrendered to ovarian cancer. Three years later, Ann Nadrich, their grandmother also died from the same disease.
Pies For Prevention Thanksgiving Bake is a project pivoted by the sisters. It already reached United States and Toronto, Canada. The project supports not only Sharsheret's Ovarian Cancer Program, a Jewish breast cancer organization but also Stephanie Sussman and Ann Nadrich Memorial Jewel.
The sale also remembers Sharseret's late founder, Rochell Shoretz, a previous Law Clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgh who also died from complications of metastatic breast cancer.
The sister's charity bake sale reached about $16,000 in their first year up to $25,000 and it spread all over the nations and other cities.
"Sometimes, there are no words that can address, or provide comfort, in times of grief," Sussman said to The Times of Israel. "Sometimes just doing something is the only way to shift grief and replace it with something else. I think that's part of the reason we do this."
Through friends and Sharsheret newsletters, the project volunteers have grown in size.
An active member that lost both parents to cancer, JJ Wernick of Los Angeles said the pie project "combines my passion for cooking and my responsibility to make the world a better place."
"My Mom was a terrible cook, but was incredibly hospitable," says Wernick, a financial consultant who once considered a culinary career. "I wanted to follow her hospitality side... My mom always said food is only as good as the company. My wife and daughter love to cook as a means of bringing family and friends together."
According to Sussman, whose job assembles at the meeting point of keyboard and cutting board as a cookbook co-author, recipe developer and food writer, the project "combines so many things I hold dear - my mother's memory, baking, feeding others, and spending time with my amazing sister. We've been pretty close all of our adult lives, but the experience of losing your mother prematurely brought us even closer together."
Resembling to any other booming campaign, the project continues "to grow and inspire us and others in an endless circle," Sussman added. "I lost a friend, Rana Samuels, to ovarian cancer last year. She left behind four kids and a husband and she was barely 40 years old. Two others are battling it right now. If only pies could cure this sucker."
