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HIGH POINT — Chances are that back in Suffolk, Va., or Cape Cod, Mass., affluent suburbs they left to enroll at High Point University, these were stories Katelyn Rhodes and Caitlin Miller only read about.

They are stories of Burmese refugees who fled brutal repression with only the clothes on their backs to safety in the United States.

They are tales of Americans without jobs or health insurance living in cars instead of apartments.

They are the faces behind child hunger statistics, a rough outpost where parents rely on “free and reduced” school lunches. And, of course, food pantries such as Helping Hands and Ward Street Mission, where Rhodes, Miller and 16 classmates volunteered all semester as part of an undergraduate religion and philosophy course in social ethics.

Here in a starkly impoverished pocket of southwest High Point, the students spent a semester getting to know this story on a first-name basis, packing boxes of groceries for families, helping serve supper Thursday nights, pouring sweet tea or working the light duty they call “hospitality.”

But this last job may be farthest removed from their campus comfort zone — and most challenging. As students attest, two weeks from semester’s end, reading Plato’s “The Republic” or Iceland’s “Poverty in America” is one thing.

However, sitting down at a table with a parent out of work and living in his car and asking, “How’s your day going?” is quite another, casting Plato and Iceland in a new light.

“In Cape Cod, you don’t really see a whole lot of poverty, and you don’t understand it,” Miller said Saturday morning, the culmination of a semester’s work at the Helping Hands pantry near HPU. “It was pretty eye-opening listening to people’s stories.”

Said classmate Nikki Eak of Jackson, N.J.: “We spend most of our time at college reading and studying, and to actually realize how close these problems were, right next to our campus, then to put our own experiences together with the texts, really helped us understand what we were learning.”

For professor Chris Franks, the idea of “civic engagement” was not new, but the structure at both Ward Street Mission and Helping Hands was: Both agencies let students see a need and respond to it, and use their individual talents.

Hence, Kyle Cook of Richmond, Va., ran delivery routes, did much of the heavy lifting and helped make dietary selections for families of various nationalities. Roanoke native Emily Erdman, who had worked at a supermarket, dealt with grocers.

And Andria Roberson of Lexington organized a food drive at her local church and used her “Southern hospitality” to help clients feel — in her words — “normal” and not judged in seeking help.

Observed professor Franks about the students: “The most interesting thing is that they learn that they can become friends with people, really begin to see them as people, and not just as 'objects of service.’ ”

“It’s very easy for these things to remain in the abstract if you only read about them,” Franks said. “It’s different when you know you’re talking about them in real life.”

Ward Street’s pastor, the Rev. Sonny Reavis, said the mission is accustomed to being “overwhelmed” by the need in High Point, and this infusion of HPU students was like having a dozen extra staff at a time.

Based on the journals the class kept this semester about the mission work, Franks said, the students came away more hopeful than discouraged by what they saw off campus.

At least one already changed her summer plans because of her work this semester.

“I’m definitely coming back to Ward Street this summer — every week,” said Rhodes, a Spanish education major from Virginia who plans to spend this summer working at the local mission learning Spanish vernacular from Mexican and Guatemalan customers at the mission’s clothing thrift shop.

“It broadens your experience with people. I always come away feeling like I’ve been served.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com or 373-7334