Adding new Pepsi Stronger Together community initiatives

Since the official launch of our grassroots community outreach initiative, Pepsi Stronger Together, we’ve been investing locally in Southern communities. We’ve been partnering with NBA teams and charitable organizations in Orlando, Memphis, Miami and Washington, D.C., to roll out programming in those communities, focused on different areas of need.

One of our most recent events was a groundbreaking ceremony for new and refurbished basketball courts at Harbor House of Central Florida in Orlando, where survivors of domestic abuse, and their children, receive shelter, support and resources.

To add momentum to these community efforts, we’re building initiatives in three more cities: Tampa Bay, Nashville and Louisville. Take a look at some of the partnerships we’re forming in these areas.

Tampa Bay

With the biggest game in football coming up, we’re excited to add to the energy of the Tampa Bay area. We have two big focuses, to start: (1) helping to protect our oceans and coral reefs through a partnership with Force Blue, and (2) supporting the local restaurant industry through a partnership with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation and the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. This is a key time to support economic recovery.

Nashville

The primary education system has been majorly disrupted by the pandemic, with schools turning to virtual learning when in-person classroom learning isn’t possible. We hope to help fill learning gaps for students, as well as to ensure that they and their families don’t go hungry. That’s why we partnered with Vanderbilt University Athletics and Jones Paideia Elementary School to bring learning opportunities and a pop-up food pantry to students and their families in December.

Louisville

We embarked on a similar school-support path to the one in Nashville by partnering with the University of Louisville, the KFC Yum! Center and Atkinson Elementary School to provide food supplies and educational materials. If our youth aren’t supported, our communities will face uncertain futures.

As for direct engagement with the whole Louisville community, it was a powerful experience to support the KFC Yum! Center as a polling site for the 2020 elections. While Louisville residents poured in to ensure their voices were heard through voting, we made sure they were stocked with free Pepsi products in the Arena Plaza.

We’re humbled by the support we’ve seen so far, but in each of these communities, this is just the beginning.