Carmel High School kids fight hunger, one handmade bowl at a time.

The students in Marc Stafford’s advanced placement U.S. history class knew poverty and hunger existed. But they didn’t realize just how prevalent it is here in Monterey County.

Now, through Carmel High School’s Empty Bowls fundraiser, they are learning about the harsh realities of hunger – and also getting the chance to do something about it.

Stafford integrates the topic into his unit on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty in the mid-1960s, which introduced federal assistance programs like Medicare and food stamps. Stafford shows his class documentaries like the 1968 CBS report, Hunger in America, and the more recent A Place at the Table.

The images of a malnourished infant are more powerful than any spoken lecture. “When they see it, there’s silence,” Stafford says, “because it’s so shocking.”

He follows up these history lessons with statistics on hunger and poverty, internationally and locally. The World Food Programme estimates 805 million people worldwide don’t have enough food – that’s one in nine.

More than 53,000 people in Monterey County, or 12.6 percent of the population, experience food insecurity, meaning they don’t always have access to sufficient healthy food, according to 2013 data from hunger relief charity Feeding America. Around 88,000 people receive assistance from the Monterey County Food Bank at least once per year.

Then came the fun part: Stafford’s class headed to the art room to make clay bowls. They painted, glazed and fired the bowls this spring. Stafford got in on the crafting, too, making a pink-and-red bowl for his daughter and a space-themed one for his son.

“It was a very nice departure from the academic grind,” he says. “I’d never done anything like that before, and it was surprisingly relaxing.”

The bowls serve as a reminder of all the people in the county who are looking at empty bowls and plates. During the Empty Bowls Soup and Bread Supper, the students will sell these bowls for $20 each to raise funds for Ag Against Hunger, a local nonprofit that distributes surplus fresh produce to food banks.

During the dinner, Carmel High’s upper courtyard will be transformed into an outdoor cafe. Students will be out greeting guests, serving soup in the bowls and cleaning up afterward.

Fifteen restaurants and caterers are donating food for the event. Old Fisherman’s Grotto brings their clam chowder, Forge in the Forest has a butternut squash soup, From Scratch Restaurant makes chili and Tommy’s Wok brings hot-and-sour soup. Paris Bakery gives bread rolls and Lafayette Bakery provides some desserts.

Carmel High School Community Service Coordinator Diana Vita, who is organizing the benefit, says students used to go to the Salinas fields and load trucks with produce for Ag Against Hunger as part of freshman service day.

“It was a great experience for Carmel kids to get out of their bubble and see what things are like for the rest of the county,” she says.

After the service day was discontinued two years ago, Vita looked for new ways to get the students involved. She came across an online video for the Empty Bowls Project, an international grassroots effort started by nonprofit Imagine/RENDER Group. She decided to replicate the idea at Carmel High.

Last year’s inaugural event, with around 350 attendees and 350 bowls, raised $8,017 for Ag Against Hunger. Vita expects this year’s event, with about 420 bowls, to approach the attendance cap of 425.

The students’ creativity shines through in the finished products, most of them about 6 inches in diameter and brightly colored. Vita and library assistant Valerie Stack enthusiastically show me their favorites. Two jellyfish adorn the bottom of one bowl, their finely detailed tentacles cascading behind them like pale curls. Others have flowers blooming on the sides or caterpillars poised on the rims. One bowl is shaped like an inverted cowboy hat, possibly a nod to the headwear of farmworkers.

Junior Kiana Haas made two bowls with sloth heads and paws because she loves the unhurried creatures. She was surprised by what she learned about hunger, but is now keen to help. “It’s really fun, and you know you’re helping out someone who’s hungry,” she says.

Junior Megan Rice, who made a sky-blue bowl, presented her research project on Ag Against Hunger at a student leadership conference in Anaheim. She hopes other students will bring Empty Bowls to their schools.

“It opens up the student body to what’s important,” she says. “We help others besides ourselves.”

EMPTY BOWLS SOUP AND BREAD SUPPER happens 5-7pm Thursday, April 30 at Carmel High School, 3600 Ocean Ave., Carmel-by-the-Sea. $20.