What’s funny about being a student or going to school? Or about being a parent of a kid going to school?

Plenty, if you’re a comedian.

But when it comes to “Comedy Cause,” a night dedicated to laughter at Northampton’s Academy of Music Sept. 9, the jokes will have a bigger goal: to raise money for some real students, the young women at The Care Center in Holyoke.

The Academy show is being staged by Comedy as a Weapon, the company formed in 2015 by Northampton comedian Tim Lovett. Lovett and some of his colleagues have staged a number of shows in the region over the last several years, and they’ve also gone to bat for charitable causes.

This year, after previously aiding organizations like The Literacy Project, the regional organization that offers free basic education and high school equivalency classes to adults, the show will benefit The Care Center, which helps young mothers and low-income women finish their education.

“They do a great job,” Lovett said during a recent phone call. “The Care Center is one of those places that goes above and beyond to help people, and that’s what we like to do — help people.”

Lovett says he’s benefited greatly from education himself. At one point in his life, he was incarcerated, then homeless. But with the help of others, he adds, he eventually found work, put himself through college, and got involved in comedy.

He’s worked with Northampton Open Media, as one example, filming some comedy skits; he and others with Comedy as a Weapon also hosted a Zoom-based program, “Quarantined Call-in Show,” during the pandemic.

He formed Comedy as a Weapon after meeting other comics through an open mic he would attend and host at Bish op’s Lounge in Northampton.

“At one point, humor was the only thing getting me through through the day, you know?” he said. “So I started using comedy as a weapon to combat all these negative things in my life, negative thoughts. And it worked — it made me stronger, and funnier.”

For the Sept. 9 show, he’ll be joined by fellow comedians Kim “Boney” DeShields from Amherst, and Janet McNamara, who’s from the Boston area.

The headliner for the show is Kevin Lee, a New York comedian whose magic tricks and juggling are key parts of his routine.

Lee’s juggling is definitely not routine, unless you think it’s normal to work with bowling balls, machetes, and the other strange objects that he pulls from the suitcase he brings on stage.

He’s shared stages with a number of entertainers from different fields, including Gladys Knight, Chris Rock, Steve Harvey and Whitney Houston.

“Kevin is great,” said Lovett, who met Lee when he was doing a gig in Springfield. “He didn’t hesitate to say ‘yes’ when I asked if he would help us.”

The theme for the show is “Back to School.” Lovett, for one, says he’s got enough funny backstories from his own experiences to find plenty of things to laugh about from an educational angle.

Like going to college as an older adult and being surrounded by 18- and 19-year-olds: “It’s like, where am I? In some kind of day care?”

DeShields, who majored in theater arts at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, says she also plans to draw on some of her own experiences with school, both as a student and as a mother of a schoolchild.

“But Tim and I have also been working on some new material, just kind of freshening things up,” she added.

Learning in Holyoke

Like Lovett, DeShields, who’s performed in a number of places, including New York City — she was also a semifinalist in 2008 for Nick At Nites’ “Search for the Funniest Mom in America” — says she’s excited about doing a benefit show for The Care Center.

Having once been a single mother herself, she noted, “You want to do whatever you can to help young mothers complete their education.”

The Care Center, which opened in 1989, provides a range of educational programs for low-income teens and young women, mostly single mothers, who have dropped out of school because of life circumstances.

Serving between 140 and 150 women a year, the center offers high school equivalency and college classes, including the “Bard Microcollege” program that lets them earn an Associate of Arts degree from Bard College in New York.

Longtime Care Center Director Anne Teschner says 75% of students who complete their high school degree there go on to attend college — most are the first in their families to do so — compared to about 43% of students nationally taking high school equivalency classes.

“Our goal is to support these women, get them out of poverty, and give them some real opportunities to build their lives,” said Teschner.

She notes that the center’s day care services are a vital component of the operation. Transportation, healthcare and counseling are also part of the program, all designed to let the young mothers concentrate on their classes.

Teschner says she’s thrilled and grateful to have this benefit taking place. Whatever The Care Center can collect from the show, she added, could go toward a field trip for students, “something designed to help expand their horizons.”

DeShields, like Lovett, also notes that laughter can be the best response to hard times, even if it doesn’t solve problems in your life. She’s gone through a number of personal struggles in the last several years, including the death of two loved ones, and also having to be a caretaker.

In addition to her success on “Search for the Funniest Mom in America,” DeShields was once a contestant on the Reality TV show “Last Comic Standing,” and her career has taken her as far as Germany. But she had to step back at one point from the circuit because of her real-life issues.

“It can be hard to be funny when you’re under a lot of stress,” she said.

But she’s confident she’ll be up to par when it comes to helping out the students at The Care Center. “We’ll make this work,” she said.

“Comedy Cause” takes place Sept. 9 at the Academy of Music at 8 p.m. General Admission tickets are $25 and can be purchased at aomtheatre.com or at box office.

Card-to-Culture tickets are also available at a discounted rate. The show is presented in partnership with the Arts Equity Group and with funding from the Northampton Arts Council, Northampton Open Media, and Sage Housing Inc.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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