WORCESTER, Mass. - Project Bread and the Regional Environmental Council (REC) are raising more awareness for food justice and local access.

The organizations visited the Beaver Brook farmers market to promote the healthy incentives program. It's state funded and gives SNAP benefit recipients up to an additional $80 to buy local food at farmers markets and farm stands. The benefits helped to keep families fed, and the region's farmers afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project Bread submitted written testimony to support making the program permanent. They say without it, more than 100,000 households in Massachusetts could be in danger of losing out on the benefits.

"The reality is that federal nutrition programs were a huge part of the solution that government action to make school meals for all available as an example and to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are the reason this crisis wasn't worse,’ Erin McAleer, president and CEO of Project Bread, said. “But obviously, we want to make sure those programs are accessible for folks. So the farmers market here today is an example of where people can use their SNAP benefits."

"It became an even more critical resource during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were really dealing with all sorts of crisis situations: loss of income, loss of housing, loss of childcare,” Grace Sliwoski, Director of Programs at REC, said. “It paired really nicely with the PEBT program which is the pandemic EBT program that also provided people with additional food resources."

According to Project Bread, since HIP's launch in 2017, the program has stimulated $6 million in financial transactions in the Commonwealth.