INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A hub for navigating Indianapolis is a temporary center of nutrition, too, as the Food in Transit program starts for the season. The program uses the Julia Carson Transit Center as a summertime distribution center for free food and knowledge.

“It’s so exciting. An exciting day and really an exciting program,” IndyGo’s Carrie Black said.

Black and Tikilia Tinker-Martin from the Office of Public Health and Safety joined WISH-TV’s Daybreak ahead of this year’s kickoff event. “It’s all about free, fresh, affordable produce. Affordable because it’s free for our riders, our teammates and anyone who’s coming through the Carson Transit center downtown.”

The innovative initiative launched in 2018. Since then, organizers have tweaked the format but have stayed true to the goal – to provide healthy food, demonstrations, and recipes for all.

“One of the amazing things that we’re doing is we’re actually doing demonstrations with this food,” explained Tinker-Martin. “Because we found that often times people don’t take the food because they just don’t know what to do with it.”

The demonstrations aim to teach techniques that will work with all kinds of food.

“So you can get a lot of the items that we’re preparing from a Dollar General, a Family Dollar, a Dollar Tree,” said Tinker-Martin. “They are local stores that are in a lot of our community, so many of the recipes you can prepare for under $10.”

The food distribution is from 2 – 5 p.m. every Thursday through September 29. The cooking demos are the second and fourth Thursday of each month.

There is no charge for any of the food or information and no application process for the food or information. Organizers welcome everyone to come.

“You don’t have to live in a certain ZIP code. You don’t have to meet any income barriers. We want to decrease all barriers. Our goal is to increase food accessibility.”