In an effort to give Edgewood High Schools’ annual Cardboard City event a boost, younger students visiting the school for open house Thursday were invited to participate in Painting to Fight Hunger.

Cardboard City is an annual effort to raise donations and awareness of homelessness in a simulation that has Edgewood students sleeping in boxes on the school lawn.

“We’ve been doing it for seven years now,” said agriculture teacher Kellie Warner, “so we thought we’d try to do something to make it a different learning experience.”

So art teacher Dawn Joseph shared an idea she’d read about in a professional journal that would have students paint ceramic bowls that would be sold and used to serve food in for a special event.

They purchased 200 pre-made bowls and invited younger students coming to the school with parents for conferences to sit in the agriculture classroom to decorate them, Joseph said.

The Cardboard City event is a project of Warner’s agriculture classes and teaches participating students about hunger-related issues, such as the impact of drought and food insecurity, aligned with the agriculture curriculum.

“We feel that food is going to become more and more of a need in the community,” Warner said.

The bowls will be offered for sale to the Edgewood community for $15 each during a spaghetti dinner in conjunction with Cardboard City, which is scheduled for Nov. 20 this year. The funds raised will be donated to a local food pantry.

“We will have a guest speaker that night to talk about hunger,” Warner said.