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Chicago’s Urban Chiditarod/Food Drive

Chiditarod (think Iditarod) is Chicago’s Epic Urban Iditarod. A charity food drive, beauty pageant, costumed shopping cart race, talent show, fundraiser and chaos generator all in one. And probably the world’s largest mobile food drive, benefitting the Greater Chicago Food Repository.

The eighth year of the Chicago Chiditarod brought the event to a new level.  What started as a food drive to avoid being arrested has morphed into a race that’s fully sanctioned by the city and the police.

Based on the Alaskan Iditarod, we use shopping carts instead of sleds, and people instead of dogs.  There is no route, but rather a series of checkpoints.  These are all taverns and the teams must spend 20 minutes at each.  Judges give points based on games played at the bars.  Bribery, sabotage and epic will are all encouraged- if not essential to be the winning team. With a high of 38 degrees Chiditarod is not for the faint of heart.

2013 RESULTS

Chiditarod’s hunger fighting efforts grew to new heights in 2013. The Greater Chicago Food Depository reported a total weigh-in of a whopping 16,953 pounds, equating to 14,128 meals to feed Chicago’s hungry. Our checkpoints held food drives for the first time, netting 749 pounds.

WANT TO CREATE AN EVENT LIKE THIS IN YOUR AREA?

There’s a toolkit for that. BWB can support you to create a similar event in your area.  Check out our Rod-in-a-box toolkit!