NORTHAMPTON — More than a half-dozen restaurants in Hampshire County are partnering with survival centers in Northampton and Amherst to provide free meals to those facing food insecurity in the region as part of a larger initiative taking place statewide.

The meals will be distributed over the next month by Uya Poke Bowl and La Veracruzana, working in conjunction with the Northampton Survival Center, and by Lili’s in Amherst, Pulse Café and Wildwood BBQ in Hadley, and La Veracruzana in Amherst, who are working with the Amherst Survival Center.

Northampton Survival Center Director Heidi Nortonsmith said both chicken and vegetarian versions of Uya’s poke bowls and Veracruzana’s burrito bowls will be served to Survivor Center clients in the city, providing a complete meal with an appropriate amount of protein and grains.

“We’re able to just offer them to clients who are here at the Survival Center receiving food assistance, although they’re not expecting it,” Nortonsmith said. “We’re finding these moments with a harried single parent who might be in the driveway picking up groceries and trying to figure out what’s for dinner, and suddenly is offered to take home a meal already prepared. It’s so gratefully received.”

The Franklin County Community Development Corp. is overseeing the pilot program known as the Food Insecurity Grant Program for Independent Restaurants. In its first year, the FCCDC is investing $450,000 to serve roughly 50,000 meals to people in western and central Massachusetts. Statewide, the program has provided $900,000.  Nortonsmith said that for the Northampton Survival Center, rather than applying for the grant themselves, they were actually approached about helping facilitate operations involved with distributing the meals.

“We actually received word through the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts that this program existed and they were looking for organizations that were equipped to be able to take on the administrative tasks, finding the restaurants and the contracting process,” Nortonsmith said. “It’s a bit of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s and being large enough that we have the infrastructure to carry it out seamlessly and make sure the restaurants are being well cared for in the process.”

In addition to the Northampton and Amherst survival centers, the FCCDC has partnered with 12 other food access organizations — identified by the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and the Worcester Food Bank — which then nominated local restaurants to participate in the program. In Greenfield, the restaurant Mesa Verde is expected to provide hot meals to participants over the course of a year, as will Hillside Pizza in Bernardston.

Nortonsmith said she was grateful to receive the funding from the program, particularly given the precarious state of food security programs amid halts in federal aid, such as the sudden cancellation of millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with a loss of federal funding for purchasing local food from farms.

“That kind of news is coming out these days, and so we’re trying to work with new constraints in that arena,” Nortonsmith said.

The Food Insecurity Grant Program for Independent Restaurants was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, when restaurants were struggling to stay open. While COVID is not the problem it once was, the program is helping restaurants — which can still struggle with profitability — add income to their bottom lines and provide meals to people in need, the FCCDC said in a statement.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.