An AACC culinary instructor taught his students to be charitable as they prepared food at the Empty Bowls Fundraiser Thursday.

HCAT instruction specialist Randy Stahl said Empty Bowls is a national fundraiser looking to raise money for those in need.

“It’s a national project that raises awareness for the underprivileged, the homeless, and the hungry,” Stahl said. “The significance of the empty bowl is that at the end of the day many people have nothing on their dinner plate or in a bowl.”

Stahl’s said he has his students cater the event to support his curriculum and teach them to be more charitable.

“Part of our curriculum is small-quantity cooking and when I started thinking about the Empty Bowls project and the classroom activity [I realized the Empty Bowls fundraiser] takes the students out of the classroom [and] into real life,” Stahl said.

“We take … [our] cooking techniques class where we make 12 different soups during the semester … add in quantity cooking and develop the cooking techniques and the recipes right within the classroom,” Stahl said. “Then we come today and execute it.”

“All these students are in my class [and] they’re heating [food] up, they’re serving, [and] communicating with all of the guests that come to support our project, Stahl said. “It instills in their repertoire the ability to help others.”

“It’s a way to give back to the college and also the community,” George Asseng, a 25th-year baking pastry arts student, said. “It brings us all closer together.”

Stahl noted Service Learning has hosted the event twice a year for over eight years, raising more than $18,000 including approximately $2,000 Thursday.

“This semester the [donation] recipient is the Anne Arundel Community College food pantry,” Stahl said. “The [pantry] in both the Glen Burnie GBTC, and the one in … the SUN building.”

Second-year early childhood education student Doneisha Torrey said she enjoyed the event.

“I think it was nice, they had like three different varieties to choose from,” Torrey said.

Stahl noted the next Empty Bowls fundraiser will be held in the spring of 2020.