By Lauren Sprang, VO Board of Directors Secretary

Welcome to my third and final post on traveling to Utah’s national parks (see Part I here and Part II here). Last time we left off in Moab where we visited three parks. My sister-in-law, Heidi, headed back to Colorado and my husband, Steve, and I continued on toward Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon National Parks.

Along our drive we stopped in Goblin Valley State Park. It was a little out of the way, but it has some awesome rock formations! We hiked approximately 3.5 miles round trip to Goblin’s Lair, an exposed hike with a final scramble up to look into a slot canyon. With a permit you can rappel into the canyon, but we just looked down into the cool dark and returned the way we’d come.

At the parking lot you can wander around the goblin-like hoodoos. They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They’re fun for all ages and you can get up close. Quoting Capitol Reef Country:

These eerie hoodoos were formed over millions of years, as layers of Entrada Sandstone eroded and alternating layers of silt and shale were deposited with the changing climates and landscapes. The weaker sandstone layers eroded from water and wind quicker than the harder rock, resulting in these exceptional formations.

The park was also used as a location for Galaxy Quest, a favorite movie of mine!

We left Goblin Valley to spend about a day total at Capitol Reef National Park. Not many people have heard of this park, but it’s worth a visit! We stopped to look at some petroglyphs on the drive in. Then we drove the “Scenic Drive” in the late afternoon, which branches off onto dirt roads that we skipped. Sudden, intense thunderstorms are common and the rangers advise keeping out of the side canyons in case of rapid flooding. The views of dramatic red rock hills and junipers were stupendous along the drive. We stopped at the end to rest and listen to the quiet.

We stayed overnight in the town of Torrey. There weren’t many vegan options in this small town, but we had a tasty pizza at Red Cliff Restaurant. It’s a simple place with only a couple of other diners.

The next day we hiked about a mile into Cohab Canyon and took a spur trail up to a lookout. The canyon wasn’t too narrow, but it was picturesque! And the hike gave us some exercise and nice views of the winding road through Capitol Reef.

In the late morning we headed to Bryce Canyon National Park, driving over Boulder Mountain, which is full of aspens and would be beautiful in the fall.

We stopped briefly at Calf Creek Falls to eat lunch. Soon after leaving Calf Creek Falls we were surprised to come across an espresso shop, called Kiva Koffeehouse. It is located on a hill with nothing but wilderness around it. It’s beautiful, totally out of place, and worth a 15-minute stop. They showed me their buyer form so I could see which coffees were organic and fair trade.

We finally arrived at Bryce Canyon, and it’s spectacular! We hiked a very popular loop that goes down into the amphitheater and connects Sunrise Point and Sunset Point. We walked along a pathway that feels like a platform for viewing the park. I highly recommend it.

We also drove the full length of the park and stopped at most of the lookouts.

We stayed overnight outside Bryce Canyon in a vacation rental in the town of Tropic. For dinner at Bryce Canyon we ate at the lodge in the park itself. It’s pricey, but they have a few vegan options. My quinoa primavera dish was soupy, which we couldn’t understand, but I had a delicious salad and Steve’s linguini pomodoro with added Gardein chicken was incredibly tasty—that’s right, they had Gardein!

Bryce Canyon National Park—with its complicated rock formations, mountains, and pine trees—was my favorite park on the trip. I’m more of a mountain woman than a desert woman. My only caveat is that Utah is cattle grazing country, so be prepared to see endless miles of cows (and calves in the spring). Also, outside of the Salt Lake City/Provo area, Utah is very rural. But if you fly into Las Vegas and drive up through Arizona, you may avoid some of the cows and catch the Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks along the way. That’s how I’d recommend visiting Utah’s national parks.

We visited in the spring, which is probably the best time. Keep in mind that it’s snowy and cold in the winter, and many of the attractions may be closed. Mid-summer is hot and dry; so bring lots of sunscreen, water, and a hat. Then put on your hiking or mountain biking shoes and have a blast!

Yuri Mitzkewich, VO’s Southeast Outreach Coordinator, is this semester’s most prolific Adopt a College leafleter—he’s traveled to 116 different schools, handing out 66,230 booklets! Activist Doris Schneeberger joined Yuri for a few weeks of his tour, and by the time her internship was over, she’d handed out 17,668 booklets at 26 different campuses!

On March 22, Yuri and Doris handed out 2,026 booklets at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa:

Doris [below, left] got her first chance to leaflet a heavy flow of student traffic and really did amazing, getting a better take rate at times than I was working. Very calm in meeting students too, she answered questions in a friendly way and got many here to take the literature, more interested than initially to check out the info. The Compassionate Athlete booklets were especially great to have here, she reported, as this campus has a heavy percentage of students dressed to work out or with sports gear on their backs.

One of the last to receive an Even If You Like Meat here was Paige [below, right], who came back right away after looking through the info. She’d already cut out most animal products, only still consuming fish, which she’d wanted to eliminate but was having difficulty. I let her know that was fine, that many transition in steps, reducing the animal products they consume as they learn about new products and find recipes that replace the foods they’re most accustomed to. She took a Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating and was very excited about trying the new Gardein seafood items I mentioned, plus having access to the Vegan Mentor Program if she needed help. Very happy we held on the few extra minutes to get the chance to meet Paige. She was inspired to go the rest of the way to full vegetarian, and to begin working towards dropping cheese and eggs also. Super cool ending to a great day of outreach!

On March 23, Yuri and Doris teamed with Candice Paschal, and together they reached more than 4,100 students at Mississippi State University:

Arriving early we got busy on what was to be another outstanding day at MSU. Again Doris and I took on different traffic flows at opposite sides of the drill field to great effect, both of us finding different crowds and getting out hundreds here per class change.

Around 10 am we were happy being joined again by Mississippi State/Starkville’s energetic leafleting machine, Candice [below, left]. She’s amazing to see at work, enthusiastically approaching everyone crossing within 20 feet of her, getting what had to be a 99% take rate. For the class changes she was working, we did nearly a full box in the hour she was able to free up to join us!

Always a very friendly crowd here, and we began getting more and more conversations going through the afternoon—many students interested in learning more, a few very inspired to begin trying to eat better, and even a pretty decent amount of ag majors stopping to politely discuss the issues with us.

Sarah [below, right] was especially moved by the Even If You Like Meat booklet she got. Already having given the suffering inherent in the meat industry some pondering on her own, she was thrilled to meet us, saying she’d be giving up meat from today. Beautiful experience finding her out here and connecting during our visit!

On March 25, Yuri and Doris handed out 371 booklets at the University of West Alabama. Doris writes:

A situation that stood out for me on this day was when one of the students who had taken a leaflet returned a few minutes later to ask me some questions [below, right]. He was friendly and wanted to find out more about veganism. He found the pictures and information in the brochure horrifying. He asked me whether I was vegan and said that he had never met one before. I told him about the manifold advantages of a vegan diet, the suffering of animals in factory farms and the environmental impact of eating meat and animal products. We also talked about health issues; I mentioned that many people have to go through a major health scare before they start gathering more information about healthy nutrition and change their diet. We talked about vegan substitutes for animal products. He, for example, didn’t know that there is almond or soy milk that you can buy instead of animal milk. In a somewhat apologizing manner, he told me that he likes meat and I then told him about diverse meat substitutes and he said that he would try them.

Another student asked me about the ingredients of a veggie burger and I told him that you can make it with beans, peas and other veggies and/or tofu for example. He didn’t know what tofu was and after I explained it to him he also said he’d try one.

On April 13, Yuri and Doris got booklets into the hands of more than 3,400 students at Louisiana State University. Doris reports:

Although we gave out a lot of leaflets, this university doesn’t seem to be the easiest to inspire people to go vegan, as the agriculture faculty is big, biomedical research is prominent and they’ve also got a tiger in a cage on campus. The leaflets inspired a discussion among students which we could track on the app Yik Yak.

Yuri adds:

I met Tommy [below, right], who was very interested. He’d been researching for fitness reasons, and had been thinking about cutting down on animal products. He responded well to everything we talked about and said he’s going vegan. Met a handful more students who we had very productive conversations with as well.

Later in the day we noticed social media activity focused on our visit, with three different students commenting dismissively, “I’ll never go vegan,” “Animals don’t have the mental capacity to suffer,” etc. It was awesome to see several students commenting back in defense of animals here, actually making better, way more eloquent points for more consideration for them. Pretty cool to see such responses at a major ag university like this.

On April 15, Yuri and Doris reached more than 700 students at Nicholls State University. Yuri reports:

Pretty great short morning visit to this southernmost Louisiana university, only 25 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. A good amount of students interested here. Christine [below, right] was super interested and said it was a wonderful coincidence we met. She told me she was ready to transition to vegetarian, so I was looking for a Guide to give her but had left them all across campus with our other supplies. She said she’d wait and as I went off to get her the info she sat and read the Your Choice and Compassionate Athlete I’d given her. By the time I returned she said, “Really I need to go all the way vegan, don’t I?” We talked a little more and by the end she said she was ready! Awesome ending to our short but sweet stop here!

Donate to Yuri’s Team Vegan page and spare twice as many animals from suffering:

Any support you generously give towards Team Vegan will be doubled for this fundraising drive and will go directly toward supporting Vegan Outreach’s life-changing work, making the world a kinder place for animals. Thank you for your support and for being a voice for the voiceless!

By Alex Bury, VO Organizational Development Consultant

On Sunday, June 12, Vegan Outreach had a very special fundraiser for Team Vegan 2016. Ari and Becky Nessel, long-time supporters of our movement, hosted VO at their gorgeous home in Northern California.

Our event was one of many Ari and Becky will host this year. They support multiple non-profits and their deep generosity has touched most, if not all, of the major animal victories of the last decade. We’re honored to work with them.

After Ari kicked off the event, VO Executive Director Jack Norris said a few words about all the new VO work. He told the guests about great new hires like Greater Ohio Outreach Coordinator, Sean Hennessy, Canada Outreach Coordinator, Jevranne Martel, and Community Engagement Coordinator, Brenda Sanders. He talked about the incredible growth and effectiveness of the Vegan Mentor Program, coordinated by Jean Bettanny. We heard about the Leafleting Effectiveness Study and, of course, the new focus on equality.

Jack said:

At VO, we recognize that we have a diverse world and we need a diverse movement if we’re going to bring about a vegan society sooner rather than later. A significant part of this is having the men in the movement recognize that the women who do so much of the work and donate so much of the money should have more influence in positions of power.

In the past two years I’ve made a strong effort to include women on Vegan Outreach’s Board of Directors. We’ve gone from having only one female board member to four out of six. In the same time we’ve hired six men, but we’ve hired thirteen women. We’ve made a concerted effort to try to hire women.

VO’s Director of Outreach, Vic Sjodin, Motivational Speaker and Diversity Specialist, David Carter, and Diversity and Community Expansion Specialist, Paige Carter, all traveled from Los Angeles to attend the event. We also had some brand new people join us—it was fun to see how inspired they were by Jack’s comments!

David and Paige spoke about what made them vegan, and of course David spoke about eating vegan as an elite athlete. Which wasn’t very fair because he was so busy talking at the event he could barely eat, and later he came in the kitchen searching for leftovers!

Mostly, though, they talked about the need for our movement to be more inclusive and how looking at other social justice issues—like food deserts in low-income neighborhoods—will help us become more compassionate and effective.

I stood up at the end to ask for donations. VO Board Chair, Mark Foy, and his partner, VO Statistician and Researcher, Eric Roberts, made a special pledge to match up to $5,000 and the money was also being doubled again by our current Team Vegan challenge donors!

I can’t resist pointing out that for all the talk about gender equality, VO had stuck me in the kitchen all day and I wasn’t cool with that!

I’m just kidding, of course—I had chosen to cater the event myself to save VO money. Catering bills can be pretty steep!

I love being in the kitchen for events like this and Ari’s house is particularly nice because of the big open kitchen that looks out onto the yard. I could see Ari and Becky’s sons feeding the rescued chickens while I cut onions, and if I looked a little emotional, it might not have been just the onions!

I made:

Usually the Reubens are the most popular dish I make, but this time the winners were by far the mushrooms with Miyoko’s cheese and the curried salad.

We also served an incredible platter of Miyoko’s other vegan cheeses—thank you Miyoko!

That was fun because we had some non-vegans there who couldn’t believe the cheese wasn’t dairy-based. I sent the empty boxes home with guests so they could easily find the products.

Thanks to Mark scoring big at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market we had an incredible bowl of sliced nectarines, plums, and blueberries. I know that sounds too healthy for a party, but trust me, we made up for it by also serving…wait for it…vegan cronuts!

Cronuts are a cross between croissants and donuts. They came from Julien & Noe in Berkeley, and they were out of this world!

I ordered enough so our guests could each take one home for a Monday morning treat, and I saved the very last cronut for myself because I had jury duty the next day. I’ve never enjoyed sitting in a courthouse at 8:00 am so much!

I’ll share the recipes soon on the Vegan Outreach blog, and keep your eyes peeled for special deals and more information from Miyoko’s Kitchen!

Including Mark and Eric’s match, we raised $15,000 at this wonderful event!

Thank you to my volunteers Mark and Eric, Sahra and Dave, Milena and Yolanda, and Lester! And thank you to Miyoko’s, Julien & Noe, and especially Ari and Becky! A special shout-out to the super talented Michelle Cehn of World of Vegan for all the great photos and videos.

We’re so close to meeting our goal—if we can raise a full $230,000 by June 30 it will all be matched!

Please donate today, and thank you!

By Lisa Rimmert, VO Director of Development

Team Vegan member Frannie Miller realized at a young age the connection between living animals and what we eat. Now, she devotes her time to creating a more compassionate world.

When she was five years old, Frannie was given a large piece of steak. She had never eaten steak before, so she asked what it was. “When I realized it was a piece of a cow,” she said, “I could not chew it or swallow it. I had to spit it out.”

That started Frannie’s journey, but it wasn’t until she reached college that she discovered there was a name for her way of eating: vegetarian.

For Frannie, veganism and activism came at the same time a little further down the road. Her daughters—undoubtedly raised by Frannie to be compassionate to all beings—became vegetarian and then vegan one by one.

An advisor and instructor at East Tennessee State University, Frannie is in a unique position to advocate for animals. She developed and teaches an online course called Food Choice and Society. She has seen several students incorporate Meatless Monday or become vegetarian or vegan because of what they learned in the course. One student, a Registered Nurse on a cardiac floor, became vegan and is educating the heart patients on plant-based eating.

Frannie enables Vegan Outreach to leaflet in Tennessee by hosting our traveling Outreach Coordinators and helping with campus leafleting. Now she is raising money for Team Vegan because, as she says, “The outreach works!”

Frannie is a brand new grandmother (congratulations, Frannie!) and wants her grandson to grow up in a compassionate world. It will take all of us to do our part—we can each find a way, like Frannie has, to incorporate activism into our lives. Frannie and her family are inspirations to me—and to many others.

Please help Frannie create a compassionate world for her grandson and all future generations!

Donate now to her Team Vegan page.

Thank you!

Steve Erlsten, VO’s Northern California Outreach Coordinator, has handed out 58,740 booklets at 76 different schools this semester!

On March 16, Steve reached more than 1,700 students at Fresno City College:

Jeremy [below, left] has been thinking about cutting back on meat because of the animal cruelty involved. He’s excited to try some vegan meat products, and might go vegan!

The following day, Steve handed out 780 booklets at Merced College:

Eugene [below, right] came back to tell me it was perfect timing, because he has been wanting to go vegan! It hasn’t worked before, but he’s going to try again with help from our classic Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating!

On March 31, Steve and fellow activists handed out 1,250 Your Choice booklets at Butte College:

It was another great day at Butte! Many thanks to Jeannie Trizzino for hosting me, leafleting, and for taking me out for sushi last night and lunch today! Melissa Gillan is a first-time leafleter, and she did great!

The high point of the day was when a student, who was rushing past on her way to class, said she went vegan after getting a booklet last March!

Now you can inspire twice as many people to go vegan: Visit Steve’s Team Vegan page and have your donation doubled today!

Steven Litrov has handed out 40,893 booklets at 76 different schools this semester!

On February 1, Tyler DeVere (below, left) and Steven had a record-breaking day at Nashville’s Lipscomb University:

We met several vegans and vegetarians who support our work and were happy to see us, and met one vegetarian, Tiffany [below, right], ready to go vegan after receiving a Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating!

On March 21, Steven teamed with Nolan Guiffre and Carol Hope of the Rochester Area Vegan Society (below), and together they handed out 900 Your Choice booklets at SUNY Geneseo:

First day back from a great spring break at home in LA. It was freezing with some snow here and there—contrast is huge from weather at home. I had volunteers from RAVS for about two hours—two great activists who have been rocking the Rochester area with leaflets this semester. They were both very enthusiastic and I believe just started leafleting this semester—definitely saved us some stops.

One student told Carol that he went vegetarian after getting a booklet last year! Lots of students said they were vegetarian. One student asked where the information in the booklet is sourced from because he couldn’t believe it—I recommended he check out other resources too.

I saw the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer on this small community bookshelf in the library. It was the book that influenced Natalie Portman to go vegan and she went on to influence me! Towards the end of the day I saw a girl reading Your Choice to her boyfriend [below, right].

On April 12, Steven and volunteers reached more than 1,000 students at Indiana State University:

Pretty warm and special day here, being joined by David Rojas and new vegan Rakeem Deizbarrz [below, left]. David initially joined us at Warped Tour last year and was excited to volunteer some more and brought Rakeem along. They both made interactions a priority and had lots of them [one of David’s, below, right], planting many seeds and opening hearts.

One student rolled up on his bike and asked me what I was handing out, and I said, “Info to help animals” and he said, “Hell yeah” and took one and rode off. Another student said she’s in an environmental group and was interested in talking about the impacts of animal agriculture more. I also met another student who had just recently gone vegan and is interested in starting up a club and getting more involved. Another student joined our conversation to tell us she used to be really involved, but schoolwork got the best of her. Awesome to have so much support!

You can support VO’s Adopt a College leafleting program and double your impact for the animals by taking advantage of our Team Vegan matching campaign: Donate now!

By Lisa Rimmert, VO Director of Development

Sunday is Father’s Day, and we at VO want to give a shout-out to one of our favorite fathers, Brian Ottens!

Brian helps so many groups and individuals in the movement, and yet he is one of the most humble people we know.

He’s been integral to VO’s success for many years, and he often goes above and beyond to help. On top of his financial generosity, Brian volunteers his time to reduce animal suffering.

Recently, Brian helped VO by volunteering at the DC and Baltimore Green Dinners, staffing a table at the Baltimore VegFest, and writing a wonderful blog post about helping vegans sustain their choices. He is also a regular leafleter along with his daughter Emily, one of VO’s best volunteers. Nobody turns her down when she offers up a booklet!

Now, Brian and Emily are raising money for Team Vegan, and they’ve pledged to create uplifting farm animal pictures with sidewalk chalk—one for every $250 they raise!

Thank you, Brian, for all you do for animals, and Happy Father’s Day!