by Jack Norris, Executive Director
Throughout our history, Vegan Outreach has faced many tough situations challenging our ability to do public outreach—9/11, the Great Recession, and an onslaught of blizzards, hurricanes, and heatwaves. Through it all, VO has kept our focus on the end game–bringing about an end to killing animals for food.
In addition to these society-wide disruptions, there’s been an endless flow of urgent animal issues that could have consumed all of our time and resources. But we knew that the spread of veganism is critical to ending this flow of animal tragedies. So, literally, come snow, wind, or high water we’ve been on the front lines spreading animal-free eating and bringing new advocates into the animal rights movement.
Now the front lines are being disrupted again—we’re facing a global epidemic that is making public outreach challenging to say the least.
Our outreach staff has been courageous these last few weeks as they continue to speak for the animals on college campuses and at other events. But the situation on the ground is becoming more tenuous by the day. Colleges are rapidly moving to online classes and large public events are being canceled. This situation shows no sign of abating anytime soon and we might be facing obstacles for months, if not a year or more.
Vegan Outreach didn’t forget about farmed animals in 2001 or in 2008, and we won’t forget about farmed animals during these tough times—we’ll adapt our outreach.
We currently have a prolific, cost-effective online ad campaign for 10 Weeks to Vegan and Get Healthy guided challenges, and in recent months, we’ve expanded our online support for the thousands of people a month who sign up for these challenges.
Our surveys show that online 10 Weeks to Vegan outreach is extremely effective—based on people’s food intake, 10 Weeks to Vegan results in a 29.4% conversion of participants to vegetarian or vegan (see Impact of 10 Weeks to Vegan for more info).
As community and college outreach faces increasing challenges, we at Vegan Outreach are brainstorming effective ways to spread veganism while also protecting our staff.
We want our donors, who pay for everything we do, to know what we’re doing with their money and what’s going on behind the scenes. If you’re one of the wonderful people who has invested in Vegan Outreach—thank you. Your funds will continue creating new vegans every single day.
We’re still in the early stages of planning, but want you to know that we’ll be keeping you informed about how we’re adapting our tactics to this quickly-developing situation.
We hope that you are staying safe and healthy during this time.
