By Ventura Breeze –
With handmade ceramic bowls and homemade soup, 5th graders at Ventura Charter School raised $1,190 for local farmworker families on February 6, capping a semester focused on the community they were supporting.
More than 100 guests attended the school’s third annual Empty Bowl Fundraiser, where students served soup in handcrafted ceramic bowls that guests purchased to take home. The event also featured a student-created art gallery of human rights posters, with students speaking directly to attendees about their work and its impact. Proceeds were donated to Friends of Field Workers and House Farm Workers Now, two organizations supporting Ventura County’s farmworker community.
The fundraiser was the culminating event of Stories of Human Rights, a semester-long study built around the novel Esperanza Rising and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Students explored the real-life challenges faced by farmworker families through literature, history, and human rights studies. Their work included research on activists, literary essays, printmaking, and poster design, with the ceramic bowls created in the weeks leading up to the event.
“This expedition challenged our students to think beyond the classroom,” said 5th grade teacher Susan Melican. “Watching them connect Esperanza’s story to the real lives of farmworkers in our own community – and then take action – was truly special.”
For many students, those connections shaped both their learning and their commitment to the fundraiser.
“What makes this experience so powerful is that students are not just learning about human rights in the abstract,” said teacher Annaliisa Garcia. “They are connecting those ideas to people in their own community and choosing to do something about it.”
The project reflects Ventura Charter School’s EL Education approach, which combines academic learning with character development and community engagement, encouraging students to apply what they learn to real-world issues.
