ON A SUN-SPLASHED afternoon in August, blueberry pies and peach pies cooled on wire racks inside PieLab, a white brick cafe with floor-to-ceiling windows on Main Street in Greensboro, Ala. Behind a counter made of planks salvaged from abandoned sharecropper shacks, two young women slid pie tins into a double oven stack. At trestle tables, beneath industrial pendant lights, four young men, on lunch break from their G.E.D. classes, dug into slices of taco pie and made weekend plans.

If there was any thought that this was just a typical small-town cafe, the blue flag above the front door dispelled the notion. As the fabric rippled in the breeze, the words inscribed at the edges came into view: “Pie & Conversation, Optimism & Design.” Pie might be served inside, but this cafe aspired to something more.

Founded by a design collective known as Project M, PieLab came to life last year as a combination pop-up cafe, design studio and civic clubhouse. Greensboro, the 2,700-person seat of Hale County, might seem an odd place for a group of well-intentioned young graphic-designers to set up a cafe. Situated in the Black Belt, a former cotton-producing region where the soil is dark and rich, Hale County appeared to be a lost cause. About one-third of the children there live in poverty. In 2002, The Birmingham News called the Black Belt “Alabama’s Third World.” How could the baking and serving of pie help tackle entrenched social and economic ills?

Project M aimed to answer just such questions. Part of what has become known as the “design for good” movement, Project M was established by a designer named John Bielenberg in 2003. Based in Belfast, Me., it functions as a kind of idea incubator, where young designers are invited to two-week programs to generate solutions to social problems and enhance public life. Since 2007, Project M has been operating regularly in Greensboro. One of Project M’s most successful projects in the area, Buy-a-Meter, was built around a series of pamphlets that helped raise money to hook up area residents to running water. Bielenberg, a contrarian who likes to challenge participants to “reject linear thought pathways,” had turned to food before to promote social change. In Connecticut, Project M and a design group named Winterhouse held an event called Pizza Farm, inviting local farmers to an area park and using their produce to make pizza for residents, while educating them about where their food could come from.