Middletown Neighbors Magazine: “You’ve Got a Friend in Everybody’s Hometown”
In The Community | By Danielle Friel
Brittany Schar was ironically out to lunch when the news broke that the governor of Pennsylvania announced additional temporary COVID-19 protective mitigation measures that would go into effect December 12, 2020, and would last until January 4, 2021, that would once again prohibit indoor dining.
“I feel so badly for those who were in the restaurant business. I cannot imagine what it is like to have your livelihood taken away right before the holidays,” she said after hearing the news. Brittany knows firsthand how hard it is to make a living in that line of work. She worked at a local restaurant for 10 years before starting her own personal development business for women called “Revive Your Fire,” where she helps women get reignited to accomplish their goals.
She recalls making $80 stretched over three shifts. “I wanted to help those people that I knew were struggling.” Brittany came up with an idea after seeing a post on the “Media, PA – Everyone’s Hometown” Facebook page listing the names of local restaurants that were open, encouraging people to support them.
Brittany started a GoFundMe page with the idea of raising $1,200 to gift 12 people in the Media restaurant business $100 each for 12 days, starting December 14, her take on The 12 Days of Christmas and began asking for donations and nominations online. Both began to pour in and she knew she wanted to record the gift giving.
The first gift given was at The Sterling Pig and the second at Fellini Café of Media were given the Monday the protective mitigation measures went into effect. Both videos were shared online and within 24 hours, $1,200 had been raised. By the fourth day, enough money had been donated to gift five people a day.
About a week after the gifting began, the story was picked up by PHL 17 and then 6ABC Action News followed along with her to actually do the gifting Christmas weekend. ABC World News aired a vlog with Brittany on December 30, and at that time $1,600 had been donated.
“Two weeks into the gifting, things got hectic, people wanted videos posted, it was stressful!” Brittany said. It was also difficult to track down the people that were to be gifted, lots of calls to owners and managers were made to uncover the schedules of the servers.
The 12 days of Christmas had come and gone and there was still more money to be gifted, so Brittany extended the gifting and planned to end on January 4, when the mandated ended. But the generous people of our community kept giving.
The fundraising page is now called From The 12 Days of Christmas to 365 Days of Kindness. At the time of the magazine’s deadline, $27,525 had been raised and almost every worker in Media had been gifted. “Media helped raise the money, I wanted to keep it local,” she said. Brittany has now started to gift outside of the borough’s limit, expanding farther into Delaware County’s restaurant business.
Brittany’s generosity is contagious and not going unnoticed. After her interview on ABC’s World News, she received a Facebook message from a man in Salem, Mass., who was interested in doing the same thing in his town. At the time of this interview, he had raised $7,500 and had gifted 56 people. The mayor of Media presented Brittany with the first proclamation of 2021 on behalf of the Media Business Authority during the Town Council meeting on January 21.
“Kindness and generosity have a ripple effect. Even if you think you are doing something small, you should still follow through with it because you don’t know how big of an impact you can have,” Brittany said.
