A first-of-its-kind fundraiser for the City of Vicksburg Animal Shelter is coming downtown next month.

Cloocroo, a pub-hopping, team-building scavenger hunt-style event, will take place on Nov. 13 beginning at 2:30 p.m. at the Watermark building. The event is hosted by Friends of the Vicksburg Animal Shelter, Inc., and a bevy of local corporate sponsors.

This event holds particular significance for the Friends group, as it’s the first large-scale fundraiser the group has held.

“This is our first event that we have done ever since we started the organization,” Board member Missy Arnold said. “Because of COVID, we haven’t before had the opportunity to have a fundraiser.”

The event will consist of 16 teams total, with five or six people on each team. Some local businesses have already agreed to sponsor the event and participate as a team, Arnold said, but the event is open to individual participants as well.

As part of the Cloocroo competition, each color-coded team will receive a list of clues and work together to determine where the clues lead. Teams will travel up and down Washington Street, with stops spanning from the Chopping Block to The Biscuit Company.

Fun times aside, Arnold explained the event’s significance is also geographic. Cloocroo is a national organization and has hosted events in Portland, Ore.; Laguna Beach, Calif.; Washington, D.C. and more, but Vicksburg’s event marks the first Cloocroo in the Deep South.

“Hill Collins, the founder of Cloocroo, will be in attendance with a group of volunteer marketing students from North Carolina State University,” Arnold said. “He went to College of Charleston with one of our board members, Cherry Robinson, and they reconnected and we set up this event.

“We are excited from the standpoint that the Vicksburg community has embraced this.”

For more information on Cloocroo or Friends of the Vicksburg Animal Shelter, Inc., visit the organization’s Facebook page.