BATON ROUGE- Cars filled Southern University's parking lot as they teamed up with the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank to feed hundreds of families.

Free COVID-19 testing was also available.

Southern continues to serve as one of the free surge testing sites in the Capital Area.

"The goal is 60,000 tests across the state, and Southern is doing its part in terms of reaching out to our respective community here to increase the number of tests," Robyn Merrick said, Vice President of External Affairs with Southern University.

CEO Mike Manning with the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank says the Louisiana National Guard helped to stock 1,500 households with essential goods to assist with a need that's growing larger by the day.

"Just look around at the economy in the Baton Rouge area, and you can see so many people who are out of work and that's really what the need is. It's not just the normal need that we face, but so many more people are unemployed," Manning said.

The hundreds of food boxes planned to make it into cars on site were gone in a few short hours.

Proving the importance of helping others through these difficult times.

"We were able to take care of that many families, that were lined up as early as 5:00 a.m. this morning to receive the food," Merrick said.

Free COVID testing at Southern University will continue until August 2.