Be part of a nationwide event to empower college students to go vegan!

On April 10th, activists like you will hand out leaflets on local college campuses, spreading the message of veganism and promoting our 10 Weeks to Vegan challenge. This fun volunteer opportunity is for everyone—not just college students!

Whether you leaflet on your own or recruit a group of friends to help, it’s bound to be a rewarding day of outreach with a big impact for people, animals, and the environment.

Complete this short form to sign up and claim your local campus!

Kick off the new year by helping animals!

Find a Winter Jam concert in a city near you, and Vegan Outreach will provide the tools you need for a great evening of volunteering.

Sign up and you’ll receive a package of pro-veg leaflets, Primal Strips vegan jerky to hand out, and sign-up sheets for our 10 Weeks to Vegan program. Armed with these tools, you’ll go to Winter Jam and spread the message of compassion towards animals!

Winter Jam is a traveling Christian concert festival that attracts thousands of young people who are friendly and very receptive to our message. You don’t need to be Christian to leaflet the events.

As a token of our appreciation, 20 volunteers who gather the most 10 Weeks to Vegan sign-ups will receive a free Vegan Outreach t-shirt!

Check out the dates below to find a Winter Jam concert near you. Peak leafleting time is from 5–7 pm, perfect for volunteers who can’t make campus leafleting events during the day.

Leafleting is more fun with friends, so share this info with yours and help us recruit!

Contact Sara at [email protected] with questions and to reserve your spot.

January 11, 2019 — Jacksonville, FL — Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena
January 12, 2019 — Tampa, FL — Amalie Arena
January 13, 2019 — Mobile, AL — Mitchell Center
January 17, 2019 — Evansville, IN — The Ford Center
January 18, 2019 — Grand Rapids, MI — Van Andel Arena
January 19, 2019 — Columbus, OH — Schottenstein Center
January 20, 2019 — Charlotte, NC — Spectrum Center
January 24, 2019 — Council Bluffs, IA — Mid-America Center
January 25, 2019 — Des Moines, IA — Wells Fargo Arena
January 31, 2019 — New Orleans, LA — Lakefront Arena
February 1, 2019 — Birmingham, AL — Legacy Arena at BJCC
February 2, 2019 — Lexington, KY — Rupp Arena
February 7, 2019 — Peoria, IL — Peoria Civic Center
February 14, 2019 — Reading, PA — Santander Arena
February 15, 2019 — Pittsburgh, PA — PPG Paints Arena
February 16, 2019 — Cincinnati, OH — U.S. Bank Arena
February 17, 2019 — Ypsilanti, MI — EMU Convocation Center
February 23, 2019 — Greensboro, NC — Greensboro Coliseum
February 24, 2019 — Norfolk, VA — Scope Arena
March 1, 2019 — Bossier City, LA — CenturyLink Center
March 2, 2019 — Oklahoma City, OK — Chesapeake Energy Arena
March 3, 2019 — Austin, TX — H-E-B Center at Cedar Park
March 9, 2019 — Louisville, KY — Freedom Hall
March 15, 2019 — Columbia, SC — Colonial Life Arena
March 17, 2019 — Southaven, MS — Landers Center
March 21, 2019 — Augusta, GA — James Brown Arena
March 22, 2019 — Raleigh, NC — PNC Arena
March 23, 2019 — Charleston, WV — Charleston Coliseum
March 24, 2019 — Greenville, SC — Bon Secours Wellness Arena
March 28, 2019 — Ft. Wayne, IN — Allen County War Memorial Coliseum
March 29, 2019 — Indianapolis, IN — Bankers Life Fieldhouse
March 30, 2019 — State College, PA — Bryce Jordan Center
March 31, 2019 — Cleveland, OH — Wolstein Center

By Jack Norris, Registered Dietitian, Executive Director

Longtime vegan activists, Carol J. Adams, Patti Breitman, and Ginny Messina, MPH, RD, have written a fascinating book, Even Vegans Die.

The title and cover are meant to parody the New York Times bestseller How Not to Die, by Michael Greger, MD—Dr. Greger even writes the foreword to Even Vegans Die!

The chapters When You Have a Terminal Illness and Protecting Your Legacy of Kindness are filled with invaluable tips that many of us haven’t considered and which will make our deaths much easier for our loved ones.

For example, have you taken the time to set up plans for the care of your companion animals once you’re gone? If not, you should read this book! Even if you’re not sick, you never know what might happen and you want to make sure your animal friends will be well cared for. Even Vegans Die will get you started.

Important topics that Even Vegans Die addresses are fat-shaming and health-shaming in the vegan movement. In the chapter, How Shame and Blame Affect Our Health and Our Advocacy, the authors describe how people often don’t feel welcome in our movement because they don’t fit the stereotype many of us are trying to present of a vegan diet leading to weight loss.

And if someone’s unlucky enough to get an illness like cancer, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes—they’ll have an extra burden of feeling like they’ve let the animals down. An excerpt:

A constricted and restrictive view of who is allowed to speak for animals reduces the impact of our vegan community. The shame and blame that often accompany obesity or chronic disease has the unfortunate result of turning animal activists into non-activists.

Even Vegans Die has inspired me—and others at Vegan Outreach—to portray veganism as welcoming to people of all shapes and sizes and we’re in the process of doing more of that in our materials.

When the beloved activist, Lisa Shapiro, passed away from cancer two years ago, I made a Facebook post in memoriam. A fellow vegan asked how Lisa could have gotten cancer if she was vegan. This person wasn’t being purposefully insensitive—she was serious.

I explained that evidence shows vegans have about a 15-20% lower risk of cancer than meat-eaters due to our diet, but, as Even Vegans Die points out, a vegan diet cannot guarantee that you won’t get a chronic disease. No one should feel shame when they get sick.

Even Vegans Die recommends that people follow mainstream medical advice on getting health screenings—advice I also heed as I recently had my first colonoscopy and am glad I did.

Even Vegans Die is a quick, captivating read and I highly encourage all animal advocates to read it—both young or old, vegan or non-vegan!

Vegan Outreach’s Executive Director, Jack Norris, RD, has written an update about Vegan Outreach’s attempts to assess the effectiveness of leafleting: Leafleting Effectiveness Study – Fall 2016 Update.

To summarize the state of the project, we are in the midst of our third pilot test to determine how best to go about measuring direct diet change created by leafleting and we are optimistic that we’ve found a method that can provide a reasonable amount of statistical certainty. The drawback is that it comes with a price tag of about $40,000. For this reason, we are likely to conduct it in waves over the course of a few semesters.

Excerpts from the Full Article

People have always asked us at Vegan Outreach how we know whether leafleting makes a difference.

We have mainly had anecdotal evidence to provide them, such as the Lives Changed and Recent Feedback pages on our website, which list some of the feedback we receive from people who have changed their diets due to receiving a booklet.

The impact that can be palpably felt on college campuses when leafleting—by talking to interested students, seeing people reading the booklets, and overhearing people discuss the issue—typically leaves an activist with a strong sense that they have just done a lot of good. These feelings are what keep so many leafleters going out day after day.

Nonetheless, it would be great to have more precise information about the impact of leafleting. This is no easy task, since there are at least four scenarios where leafleting is likely to make a positive difference.

• Direct Diet Change: A person receiving a booklet is moved emotionally or intellectually by the suffering of farmed animals and adopts a vegan diet.
• Word of Mouth: The original booklet recipient shares that information with others either through conversation or passing along the booklet.
• Touchpoint: A person is made aware of the suffering of farmed animals by a booklet, which makes them more likely to change their diet when presented with a future outreach activity.
• Animal Protection Community-Building: Leafleting is a low barrier-to-entry activity for new and experienced animal activists alike. Taking part in leafleting outings builds important connections between people and organizations in the animal protection community.

Historically, studies on leafleting have focused on the first scenario (direct diet change). Vegan Outreach’s current efforts are also focused on determining how likely people are to change their diet after receiving a booklet. However, to get a full understanding of the benefits of leafleting, these other dimensions have to be taken into consideration, and may themselves be subjects for future investigations.

A 2016 Harris Poll commissioned by the VRG found that “Approximately 3.7 million U.S. adults are vegan; 4.3 million are vegetarian but not vegan.”

To my knowledge, these polls are the best information we have on how many U.S. adults are vegan, and they show that over 22 years—and a great deal of activism—we have increased the number of vegans by about 3 million.

Click here for full article.

Liz Dwyer, Culture and Education Editor of TakePart (Oct. 5, 2016) reports that Students Are Going Vegan, and It’s Helping Colleges Trim the Fat. Excerpts:

According to a survey released Tuesday by peta2, the youth division of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, meat- and dairy-free menu items have become one of the hottest things on college cafeteria menus. The organization surveyed nearly 1,500 four-year colleges and universities in the United States and found that 62 percent of schools serve vegan menu items on a daily basis, up from 28 percent in 2014.

A study published in the September 2015 edition of the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found that people who go vegetarian spend an average of $750 less on groceries than folks who follow federal dietary recommendations.

Read More

By Jack Norris, RD, VO Executive Director

When I saw that Tofurky had made all of their pizzas gluten-free I got very sad. I had loved Tofurky pizza in the past, but my experience has been that gluten-free pizza crusts were soggy with an aftertaste—almost inedible.

Nevertheless, I mustered the courage to go gluten-free for a meal. I’m happy to report that I was very pleasantly surprised—I didn’t even notice a difference!

In fact, I found myself back in that old familiar state of wondering if I really would finish the entire pizza at one sitting. I was thankful the next day when I remembered that I hadn’t given in to temptation and there were still a few slices left!

I’m sorry I doubted you, Tofurky. Will you forgive me?

Vegan Outreach has conducted a large randomized, prospective study examining diet changes three to five months after reading a variety of booklets promoting veganism and awareness of animal suffering.

We compared four booklets: Your Choice, Even If You Like Meat, Speciesism, and A Simple Way to Live (focused on chicken reduction).

Although few significant differences between booklets were observable in a population of this size (n=1,539), large, measurable decreases in animal consumption were readily seen.

The study also showed that people who newly avoid eating mammals due to reading the booklets are also likely to avoid eating chickens.

In this population, an average of one person reduced their consumption of all non-vegan foods to less than once per week for every 75 Vegan Outreach booklets read.

Details Here

By Alex Bury, Organizational Development Consultant

Vegan Outreach staffers David Carter, Paige Carter, Lisa Rimmert and volunteer Brian Ottens recently helped with two amazing events in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD.

Thanks to DC and Baltimore superstars Brenda Sanders, Naijha Wright-Brown, and Maureen Cohen Harrington, who worked closely with great teams of DC and Baltimore volunteers, more than 200 people learned about vegan eating. They didn’t just get a VO booklet or hear a talk—they got a booklet and heard great talks and ate delicious vegan food!

As part of the Green Dinner speaker series, David also spoke at Northwestern High School in Baltimore.

Vegan Outreach is concerned about veg recidivism (people who go vegan and then fall off the wagon due to lack of support). That’s one reason why we want to support more of these events.

A quick touch is important and we’re ramping up our fall plans for college leafleting—but we have to also offer quality over quantity at times. That means meeting non-vegetarians, sharing good vegan food so they get an idea of what they might eat, answering their questions, and offering a personal connection. These deeper touches are messier and harder to organize but if we want to work towards a vegan world we have to do them.

Vegan Outreach is also concerned about the lack of diversity in the mainstream animal movement and the damage that does both to people of color who are excluded, and to the work that is less effective when it’s mostly geared towards only one group of people.

So you can see why we love these dinners!

Brenda and Naijha offered welcoming spaces, filling comfort food, and great info about going vegan. They featured local speakers and David Carter also spoke. When he talks about being fit on a vegan diet it’s hard to ignore!

Superstar VO volunteer Brian Ottens and staffer Lisa Rimmert were on hand to answer questions about vegan eating and offer plenty of booklets with recipes, nutrition guidelines, and information about how animals suffer in slaughterhouses.

Brenda and Naijha have created a thriving community of vegan resources so that once people get that first nudge to go vegan, they can follow up with local events and people to stay vegan.

A new vegan can eat at Naijha’s restaurant, The Land of Kush, attend Brenda’s Vegan Living Program, or attend events like the Baltimore Vegan Mac ’n’ Cheese Smackdown.

I don’t know of any city that has successfully created a vegan support community like Baltimore has. Brenda and Naijha, we don’t know how you do all that you do, but we know we’re honored to support it.

By Alex Bury, Organizational Development Consultant

I’ve been a donor and volunteer to Vegan Outreach for many years, and that includes my biggest volunteer project of all, being married to the Executive Director, Jack Norris! Let’s just say he’s a work in progress.

This year I started consulting and my main client is Vegan Outreach. I do mostly fundraising work, but I’m also an expert when it comes to hip hop. OK, maybe not. But I have been learning about it when I’m not listening to Broadway musicals.

Vegan Outreach teamed up with Keith Tucker of the 10th Element of Hip Hop to help him bring vegan food to the hip hop world. Hip Hop traditionally had 9 elements of cultural expression and Keith wanted to add a 10th—Health & Wellness—based on vegan eating. A powerful idea.

On April 21st, Jack and I were lucky to see it all come to fruition! Keith hosted the 10th Element of Hip Hop Awards Ceremony in Harlem, New York City. VIP’s like John Salley, Easy AD, Styles P, and Stic.man were there in person to sign the declaration.

It didn’t really hit us that we were watching history be made until we were sitting in the auditorium at the awards ceremony. It was very exciting, and gave me a boost of optimism for the future!

Later that day Keith, Chef Ariel Bangs, Chef Chandra, and a host of volunteers put on a Green Dinner at a public school a block away.

They served vegan tacos, chili, fruit water—no soda at this dinner!—and a delicious salad to a big school dining room full of kids, parents and teachers.

Jack and I prepared fruit waters and helped serve. It was pretty cool to have people coming up to me wanting seconds. I asked one kid, “Have you ever had vegan food before?” He said, “No, but I want more!

The night ended with a small concert for the kids—Hip Hop artists dancing on stage with little ones, while we handed out Vegan Outreach leaflets to the grown-ups.

A lot of parents asked for 2nd and 3rd booklets to share with others. Vegan Outreach excels at getting vegan info into the hands of young people who are open to change.

VO started leafleting 20 years ago and they’ve handed out over 20 million booklets to date. They’re still going to the schools in remote areas—hello, Wyoming! The Green Dinners are a perfect complement with a deeper touch—each person who gets a leaflet also gets to taste vegan food and talk to vegans. All of this outreach combined with the thriving Vegan Mentor Program—created to try and stop veg recidivism—makes for a stronger movement over all.

If you’re like me, you often get angry about animal abuse and sometimes you might feel a sense of hopelessness. Getting involved with VO is the best way to counteract those feelings!

Thanks to the *amazing* donors who made the Hip Hop events happen, who volunteered, and who keep VO going strong year after year. You know who you are and we love you!

If this outreach inspires you to give more, please consider giving to Team Vegan—your donation will be doubled if you give before June 30!