The United Way of Sault Ste. Marie and District is in the middle of its current fundraising campaign.
The organization will continue with traditional ways of raising money, but this year a unique event is generating excitement and money for the organization.
Cockroaches, tarantulas, and scorpions are some of United Way's partners this year.
With it becoming increasingly difficult to raise funds for charitable organizations, the united way is thinking outside the box to raise money.
Sonny Spina, the United Way Campaign chair for this cause, shared his experience with this unique event.
"You can see some of our little friends here too that have shown up. And what they're doing is they are racing cockroaches and you can see behind me there is a cockroach cranium, and staff are coming down and they're highly involved they purchase a cockroach and they get to race it to win a fun prize at the end." said Spina.
Spina was the first to put his head on display with the cockroach cranium, letting all sorts of insects inspect him.
Lacey Caputo, an OLG employee joined in on the fun.
"I've been nominated to get the bugs on my head so it made me really nervous. But everyone is excited and you can see everyone down here cheering each other on and pledging more money. So it's for a good cause so why not do something out of your comfort zone." Said Caputo.
"We have a lot of campaigns that are quite fun, but not like this. It's not very often you can say you raced a cockroach." Said Joe Bruni, an OLG employee.
Kayleigh Smith, another OLG employee, can see the difference this bug-filled event has made on the attendance to a United Way fundraiser.
"This is the most people I’ve seen in the room. There's other fundraisers and things that we're invited to and the turnout is never the best. But this is one people have been talking about, the emails have been coming out." said smith.
United Way staff said they raised nearly $800 in about one hour at the PUC a couple weeks ago.
Members hope to have four or five more businesses come on board before the current campaign comes to an end.
