Take-out platters full of spaghetti and meatballs left the Mander Playground at a regular clip on Saturday, April 30, each one representing a donation to the Strawberry Mansion Learning Center. Other donors sat inside the recreation center, eating their food at tables, and at the end of the day more than $500 was raised.

Kevin Upshur,the Learning Center’s chairman and life-blood of the center’s day-to-day operations, said the dinner was part of a larger effort to raise $5,000 to hire a computer instructor, buy books, and pay for student trips.

Most of the 75-100 people who bought dinners took them out of Mander Playground, located at 33rd and Diamond Streets, according to Tootsie Iovine, owner and chef at Tootsie’s Express buffet-style restaurant in Reading Terminal Market, who cooked the food for the event. She said kids come to her shop to eat after attending their weekly cooking class, also at Reading Terminal.

She donated her time cooking the food, which she said was a gift from the Reading Terminal Market Merchants Association.

When kids from the Learning Center visit the  Reading Terminal Market they also go to Tootsie’s for food

“We’re doing this for the kids.” she said as she scooped a helping of spaghetti and sauce into a white styrofoam take-out container. The menu also included salad and meatballs that were offered as an accompaniment to the spaghetti or on a roll as a sandwich.

Upshur said he had notified the organizers of the Broad Street Run, which was scheduled for the following day, about the dinner as an opportunity to “carb up” for the race, and some were notified by email by another volunteer. Both  Upshur and Iovine said they saw a few of the  runners, and one who was from the Penn Relays, which were also being held at the time.

This year, three students from the Learning Center were participating in the Broad Street Run, according to Upshur, who has run the race himself since 1995.

Mander Playground, which is within Fairmount Park, consists of a baseball field, general athletic fields, full and half basketball courts tennis courts, and a swimming pool.