Tie-dying teen challenges you to vote and refresh the world

Register to vote in Pepsi’s Refresh Project, and with a click of your mouse you can empower high school students to establish Food For The Poor-related clubs. Samantha Kerker, 16, passionately believes all high school students should have the opportunity to witness poverty firsthand, and to give back to their community before they graduate.

Samantha’s idea to start “Students For The Poor” clubs in Palm Beach County was inspired by the questions her peers asked about her Food For The Poor mission trip to Nicaragua. She found the travel experience to a developing country to be so unlike her experiences in the United States.

“When I returned home from Nicaragua, I had a lot of explaining to do,” said Samantha, who tie-dyed her way to building her first Food For The Poor home for a destitute Nicaraguan family in December 2010. “I had to explain to my friends that in remote villages in developing countries, some people live in dilapidated shacks with dirt floors and have to walk for miles to find water. Their priorities are their immediate needs for survival – food, water, and shelter – not electricity to charge cell phones or to power laptop computers.”

Here’s how you can help Samantha realize her dream. Cast your vote each day, from Sept. 1-30 to support your cause on Pepsi’s Refresh Project website. Samantha’s idea is competing for votes to earn $50,000 in funding.

“The most important thing I want people to know about my idea is that we all think we know what poverty is, and we have all seen pictures of people living in poverty. But seeing and experiencing it firsthand changes lives,” Samantha said.

Every vote counts. Look for the Power Vote code on specially-marked Pepsi products. It should be under the bottle cap or printed on the inside of your multi-pack. Yellow bottle caps contain extra votes – 100, 75, 50 or 25. Enter the Power Vote code when you login and click "Activate" to support ideas that refresh the world.

Food For The Poor, the third-largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian agency provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.

Contact:
Jennifer Leigh Oates
Food For The Poor
Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6054
jennifero@foodforthepoor.com