Ten Things You Can Do To Help Animals Today

1. Print out posters advocating for veganism, and put them up on telephone poles and public bulletin boards around your city or University campus. Make sure to be aware of your local postering laws first! You can find printable posters online, or make your own, or order some from an animal rights organization.
2. Order some leaflets promoting veganism (or print them off your computer-- have you seen the ones I've designed?). Once you have your leaflets, hand them out to passersby on a busy street corner!
3. Write a letter to a local grocery store, restaurant, or cafeteria asking them for more vegan options. Remember to give them specific examples of vegan foods that will be used instead of animal products! One thing you could ask for is the new VeganEgg, for example.
4. Bake vegan treats and give them to your co-workers, classmates, friends, and/or family. Don't forget to tell them that it's vegan!
5. Order some animal rights stickers to stick on your laptop, wallet, or water bottle.* When you take these items into a public place, people who see them will be reminded of the animal rights and vegan ethic.
6. Write a Letter to the Editor or an Op-Ed on a recent vegan-related or animal-related issue, particularly if it's something about which the newspaper has recently published a story. Even if your letter doesn't get published, the newspaper staff will still see it and may be influenced by your message in some way.
7. Get some sidewalk chalk and write pro-vegan messages on the pavement outside (in places where it's legal to do so, of course). Bonus: if you take a photograph of your chalk creation, you can send it in to Vegan Chalk Challenge and they'll post it on their Facebook Page!
8. Put together a little booklet of your favourite vegan recipes to give to family and friends. Alternatively, you could make the recipes into an e-book, and then send the e-book to people by e-mail and/or post it on Facebook! Bonus: include photographs of the foods in your booklet!
9. Send a nice note or e-mail to your favourite vegan activists to thank them for the work they do. A thank-you letter can really make someone's day, and encourage them to keep working for animal rights.
10. The ideas I've given above are just a few ways to inject some activism into your everyday life, but there are also more long-term projects that you can do to help animals. If you have the time and energy for long-term activist projects, why not take some time out of your day today to brainstorm about how to combine your talents, skills, and interests for animal rights? For example, you may wish to start a blog, host a podcast, give presentations at local schools, write a book, start a vegan business or organization, or run vegan cooking classes.

If you're really keen to dive into animal rights activism, you could try doing one of these things every day for ten days! Or, just pick and choose from this list whichever activities you'd like to try. Thank you for working to create a kinder, and more just, world.

The February Issue of "alive" Magazine is About Being Vegan!

Alive magazine is a Canadian magazine that is supported in part by the Natural Health Products industry. It is available for free in health food stores across Canada, and I used to read it.

I stopped reading alive magazine about a year ago, as I found it disturbing that they had so many animal products in their recipes.

However, today I went to my local health food store and saw the latest issue of alive on the counter. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this month's issue of alive is all about "Being Vegan"! The Guest Editor is Brendan Brazier, a vegan Ironman triathlete, author, and co-founder of the "Vega" health products. And so, for the first time in about a year, I picked up a new copy of the magazine.

Unfortunately, there are still non-vegan advertisements in this issue of the magazine, and I am not going to go back to reading their magazine on a regular basis unless they stop including dead animals in their recipes, but I find it heartening to see that veganism is entering the mainstream more and more.

This issue has tips about vegan substitutions when baking, provides lots of vegan recipes, and includes stories about vegans.

Keep speaking up for the animals, everyone-- I think the logic of veganism is being heard with a greater intensity every year. :)