JCPS students receive Christmas gifts, groceries at Pepsi Stronger Together Holiday Market at KFC Yum! Center
Students at Atkinson Elementary School were sent on a special trip to the KFC Yum! Center on Tuesday to visit a holiday market just for them.
Pepsi Stronger Together and the Shaquille O'Neal Foundation partnered with JCPS, University of Louisville and Kroger together to give back to local kids and their families.
More than 200 students attended the event. Robert Kish and his son Brayden Burchett were one of the first families to go through the market.
"One of his teachers came up and helped us walk through, so that was pretty cool that it was actually one of his teachers that me and his mom both know and he knows so he was comfortable with that," said Kish.
After Brayden took pictures with University of Louisville's mascot, Louie the Cardinal, he joined other kids in the reading room. This tent featured shelves filled with books and a carpet where kids could sit and listen to stories told by celebrity readers.
While the kids were kept busy, parents were able to slip down to another tent and pick out a Christmas gift. Volunteers wrapped the gifts so all the parents had to do was put it under the tree.
Each family also got to take home two bags filled with groceries from the Kroger pop-up food pantry.
"I walked out and they handed me one bag and they were like 'Don't forget your turkey' and they handed me another bag and there's a whole meal in those bags," said Tiffany Sisco, mom of an Atkinson fifth grader. "I'm just grateful."