Trays of chicken, canned goods, snacks, and other essential items were unloaded from a van and transported into the South End Children’s Café on Monday.

“We’ve donated anything from shampoo, any food items, dry items,” said Anthony Fresina, the business manager for Laborers’ Local Union 190.

Fresina and other union members were dropping off these donations. It’s just some of the help arriving at the children’s cafe after a call for an emergency food drive on Saturday due to supplies running low.

“We hope we can make some families’ lives a little easier during this time,” Fresina said.

“By 2:30 p.m. we had cars lined up, up the street," said Tracie Killar, the director and founder of the children’s café, referring to Saturday afternoon.

This is week 11 of serving during the pandemic, and they’re feeding about 500 families each week.

“Not only do we feed the families that we deliver to, but we also like to put food outside for our neighbors,” Killar said.

Donations from the last three days has filled up the cafe, and spilled over a neighboring building and a U-Haul truck. Killar says this will last them about three weeks until it needs to be replenished again, which is possible thanks to the donations.

“We all help each other, so I think it’s really important so us to keep helping each other and to keep really living and believing that we’re all in this together,” Killar said.