The Pepsi Refresh Project focuses on promoting positive social change and collaborating with people who have the ideas and the passion to refresh the world.

Despite our best intentions, we did not follow the program’s guidelines properly, which is the subject of an article in today’s New York Times.

We will be taking the following steps: Pepsi will award Joyful Heart a discretionary grant of $250,000. The second- and third-highest vote-getters at the $250,000 level will receive $250,000 grants from the Pepsi Refresh Project. We also will return the submission to its original format.

We are committed to giving away $1.5 million in mid-March to what will now be 33 grant recipients and more than $20 million by the end of the year to help people bring their positive ideas to life. More than anything, this is the most important commitment of all.

As we move forward and learn from this, we are committed to taking steps to ensure the fairness and integrity of the program and that the Pepsi Refresh Project continues to inspire people to create positive ideas that will change the world.

–The Pepsi Refresh Team

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UPDATE 3:46 PM: Pepsi will award Joyful Heart a discretionary grant of $250,000 no matter where they finish in the voting and will also award $250,000 grants to the top two vote getters from the remaining candidates in the category. Should Joyful Heart finish in second, Pepsi will award grants to the Nos. 1 and 3 vote getters. Should Joyful Heart finish third or lower, Pepsi will award grants to the Nos. 1 and 2 finishers. No matter how the voting ends, Pepsi will provide three grants. We felt it was fair to leave the Joyful Heart entry on the site because the idea is inspiring and worthy of attention, and the organization was not responsible in any way for the submission change.