The Chicken & The Unicorn: Stunt Highlights Hunger In Danbury

DANBURY, CT — When Thanksgiving rolls around every year, local governments turn their attention toward their local food pantries. At the Mayor's Office in Danbury, those food pantries, and residents' food insecurity, are a 12-month fixation.

The day-to-day fixating and fixing falls into the lap of Taylor O'Brien, who handles public relations for Danbury. She said the city has traditionally worked with a number of pantries to ensure their needs are met, but at one point between COVID-19's second wave and Gov. Ned Lamont's third phase, cracks began to appear.

"We were targeting a few individual pantries whom we knew were getting overwhelmed," O'Brien said. "Daily Bread was seeing three times the number of people, which for them is a huge increase for their volunteers to handle."

She realized the city needed to cast its net much wider.

O'Brien began directing funds towards the Danbury Food Collaborative, which is an umbrella group for 24 food pantries, congregate meal providers, and food partners in the area.

The catalyst for the fundraiser came from the unlikeliest of change agents.

"It was Union Savings Bank who reached out to me and said, now that John Oliver is doing this (donating money to the Connecticut Food Bank), we think we might be able to get other people interested."

The twist would be that these donations would stay local. CT Food Bank does its good work statewide, but Union wanted to focus just on the food insecure of Danbury.

See Also: Millions Made Hungry By Pandemic Could Include Your Neighbor

With O'Brien's help, Union roped the Savings Bank of Danbury and Newtown Savings Bank into a fundraiser spearheaded by the United Way, who know a thing or two about spearheading fundraisers. The three banks donated $15,000 each to start the "Feeding Our Neighbors Community Challenge" drive. All donations will go to the Collaborative who disperse the funds to the area pantries.

The initial plan was to sunset the fundraiser at the end of October, but O'Brien pushed to keep it up through Thanksgiving.

"I basically said, 'John Oliver has come and gone. Let's really grow this into a holiday season thing', and they couldn't be in more agreement."

Enter The Chicken

O'Brien created a fundraising page where residents could pledge their donations, and her partners at United Way suggested she coerce her boss to set one up was well.

In the preparation for one of their Facebook livestreams, O'Brien said she told Mayor Mark Boughton she would challenge him to the fundraising contest. What Boughton didn't tell her was that he would introduce a costume penalty on-air during the show.

If O'Brien's page raised more funds than his, the mayor would run down Main Street in a chicken suit. If the mayor raised more money, she would have to run the same course in a unicorn outfit.

"He came up with the idea of running in the chicken suit," O'Brien laughed. "And the unicorn idea came from a co-worker who showed up at work in a giant unicorn costume and it was fresh in his mind."

And you thought your office had some eccentrics.

The pair have had good fun with the rivalry on social media, and the attention has paid off in pledges. As of the Friday before Thanksgiving, $75,586 has been pledged to the fundraiser, with a goal of $100,000. Out of that, $5,275 is from O'Brien's efforts; $3,816 has come from the mayor's page.

As crucial as the cash will be for the pantries, O'Brien is also stoked about how the chicken/unicorn stunt is raising awareness about food insecurity in Danbury.

"We do know that (Danbury residents') economic struggle has increased" O'Brien said. "Many people lost their jobs early on. And I don't believe these are people who might normally 'reach out,' but it doesn't mean they don't need our help."

O'Brien says she hears from pantry volunteers that COVID-19 has brought many people to their doors whom they have never seen before.

"So if you don't know if your neighbor is struggling, they might be. If you can afford to help, donate. We know that the United Way is putting it into the hands of the people who need it."

Donate to the Mayor Mark Boughton's page here.

Donate to Taylor O'Brien's page here.

Patch has partnered with Feeding America to help raise awareness on behalf of the millions of Americans facing hunger. Feeding America, which supports 200 food banks across the country, estimates that in 2020, more than 50 million Americans will not have enough nutritious food to eat due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. This is a Patch social good project; Feeding America receives 100 percent of donations. Find out how you can donate in your community or find a food pantry near you.