Bay Area Vegetarians

Two kids ask Julie about vegetarianism

Bay Area Vegetarians hosted an information table at the 2009 Maker Faire held at the San Mateo Expo Center on May 30th and May 31st.

We had hundreds of people visit our booth and gather vegan information, and ask questions about vegetarianism. It was fun to meet the BAVeg members who came by to say hi, including Ajay who helped us with leafleting. Elizabeth, Ajay, and Tammy distributed 750 Vegetarian Starter Kits via leafleting.

Thank you to

– PETA, PCRM, Farm Sanctuary, Vegan Outreach, and UPC for supporting our outreach by providing materials
– the volunteers who made this possible: Julie, Mila, Mike, Lissy and Ashley, and booth organizers Elizabeth and Tammy
– Maker Faire for inviting us to participate
– Everyone who accepted vegetarian information from us.  We hope this starts you on the path to compassionate and healthy living.

Maker Faire Photos in the BAVeg Gallery

Reading her new Vegetarian Starter Kit

Bay Area Vegetarians is returning to the 2009 Pride Celebration.  This will be our 7th year participating in PRIDE!

Pride weekend is June 27th and 28th.  We will have an information booth on both days, and will march in the parade on Sunday.  Our parade theme is “Love and Let Live”.  To volunteer for one or both activities, please use the links below.

Booth / Leafleting Veg outreach / Education – SF
Walk/Leaflet with us in the Pride Parade: Love and Let Live – SF

New volunteer opportunities! Please check ’em out here (added 6/15)

Meet Michelle:  Michelle is coordinating the volunteers for the outreach at the booth this year, and shared a bit about herself with us. 

For those who don’t know me, I’m a recent college graduate dedicated to spreading the message of compassionate eating.  In college I was president of the Case Animal Rights & Ethics Society and more recently I’ve been working on a new website, www.veganbreak.com, featuring short videos about veganism in an effort to make veganism more accessible to the general public. I’m eager to get involved in Bay Area veg outreach and can’t wait to meet all of you!

One of our members, Sky, is interested in organizing a daytime letter writing party in San Francisco.

Letter writing is one of the most effective ways we can advocate for animals, and I would love to start a letter writing group in San Francisco. I can host and provide all the materials and research we would need… but my only free time is around 11-2 on weekdays. I’m just writing to see if there would be any interest out there to meet in that time frame. If so, let me know, and we can start to plan a meeting.

If you’re interested, please email us and we’ll forward your information onto Sky.

Saturday was the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in San Francisco, and also the annual Bay Area Vegetarians Leafleting at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  🙂

BAVeg Leafleting Leprechauns

Our team of leafleting leprechauns hit the streets of SF, and handed out 1,500 Vegetarian Stater Kits in one hour!!

THANK YOU Alex, Ari, Lisa, Caroline, Michelle, Donna, Jordan and Tammy! BAVeg volunteers share some thoughts about this activity:

Alex enthused “Event leafleting is always fun, because the crowds are in a good mood. Twice I had people chasing after me to get a brochure! Love that! Leafleting is is so easy, and so effective.  I love thinking about all the people who learned about animal suffering today for the first time.  I wonder how many vegetarians we made?”

Parade attendee reads VSK

“This may have been the easiest leafleting I have ever done! Not a negative comment all morning, a few dozen people came up asking ME for guides (rather than the other way around) and at least 50% of people who I offered I guide to took it. Combine that with a great meal with some inspiring vegetarians, all committed to raising the consciousness of our society, and you’ve got a heck of a finish to my week!” exclaimed Ari.

Michelle adds “It was great fun, and such a happy vibrant crowd that seemed to really embrace the veg message!”

Reading her new VSK

Jordan shares his personal experience.  “I’ve been a vegetarian since 1967, and had little success in getting people to go veg. It came as a big surprise, there is an easy way to recruit new vegetarians. Just hand out leaflets. Some people who read the leaflet decide to eat less meat, some become vegetarians or vegans.

Leafleting is fun. Especially at special events, parades etc, because people let down their guard and are willing to talk to strangers. In a short time you can hand out a lot of leaflets.

Now I organize vegetarian leafleting at some Buddhist teachings I go to, asking Buddhists to go veg. Think about what events you go to that you can leaflet. It’s great to know that you have done something that makes a difference.”

Please watch the BAVeg calendar for the next San Francisco Have a Heart, Go Veg Leafleting activity.

Bay Area Veg volunteers continue to help the public turn over a new leaf towards veg*nism by distributing Vegetarian Starter Kits.

Elizabeth, who has been leafleting at the Farmer’s Markets in Palo Alto & Menlo Park, uses Compassion over Killing’s VSK and has reached over 300 people in the last 3 months.  (To join Elizabeth at future leafleting activities, see the BAVeg Event calendar)

Volunteers, VSKs, SF Ferry Building

In San Francisco, the monthly Have-a-Heart, Go Veg Leafleting activity continues with a new location – the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market on the Embarcadero.

January was the first outing at the new location.  Kuntal and Mila  joined organizers Alex and Tammy to distribute 300 of PETA’s Vegetarian Starter Kit . Yesterday, Shani, Jason, Sky, Alex and Tammy beat the rain and distributed 500 VSKs.

To join Tammy & Alex at the next Have-a-Heart, Go Veg Leafleting activity, see the BAVeg Event calendar

Thank you to our volunteer leafleters, organizers Alex & Tammy, and to Ann and Anabela who stamp the VSKs to refer readers to bayareaveg.org and our local events, activities, and vegetarian restaurant guide.

January is our annual opportunity to look back at the year that just ended, and to look forward and plan for the new year.

Bay Area Veg was first established in October, 2001 to address a need in the community for one organization that would support both the vegan and vegetarian community, as well as activists interested in veganism and animal rights. That twin dynamic continues to be reflected in the type of events and activities that our members have organized.

In 2008, BAVeg volunteers hosted 168 events:

• 93 community/social events: Vegan Food parties, restaurant dinners, book club meetings for general fiction as well as non-fiction veg and animal rights topics, volunteer work events, and fundraisers for Animal Place and Farm Sanctuary

• 75 advocacy/outreach events: letter writing parties, veg leafleting (just under 25K distributed), KFC cruelty protests, tabling outreach, and rodeo and circus protests

The community scene has changed vastly since BAVeg was created in 2001. There are several other ways for veg*ns to connect with each other, including new organizations and new social networking communities like Facebook and meetup.

What is needed now? That is the question for 2009 and beyond. Help us chart our future and influence our growth with your participation. Please, don’t take your veg community and organizations for granted. The reason this is a cliche is because it’s true – many hands make light work. So give us your hand .. and your most brilliant ideas for an awesome 2009.

Please add your suggestions and ideas by commenting in this post, or you may also email us privately via the contact page

Tammy & Chris at BAVeg booth at SF Pride

We want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and hope that 2009 will be a great year for advocacy & outreach in the Bay Area and with Bay Area Vegetarians, aka BAVeg aka Be-A-Veg

This is a beginning of a new year, and we’re in search of fresh ideas, energy and talent to help shape the direction of BAVeg for the future. BAVeg is run entirely by volunteers; we have no paid staff or offices.  So, our continued operation really is dependent upon each one of us.

Chris and I have been with BAVeg since its humble beginnings as “SFBAVeg” in October, 2001; we designed and built http://bayareaveg.org, including the custom Ultimate Guide, organized hundreds of events and activities, and incorporated it as a non-profit 501(c)(3).

Through all of this, we have enjoyed working with many wonderful and dedicated people over these years on BAVeg’s core principles of CARE — Community, Advocacy, Resources, and Education.

This dinner meeting will be an opportunity to meet with other like-minded folks and discuss forthcoming projects and volunteer needs, outreach strategies and styles, and just network and socialize, too, all while enjoying delicious vegan food.  Udupi is an all-vegetarian restaurant with many vegan selections of Southern Indian fare, including dosas and uthappam. And, unlike other SF restaurants, it is actually heated during the winter so we won’t need to bundle up just to eat.

What: Volunteer & Activist Community Dinner
Where: Udupi Palace, 1007 Valencia St (21st St), San Francisco
When: 1/29/09 Thursday, 6:00 pm
RSVP | Full Details

So whether you’re new or old BAVeg member, aspiring or experienced activist/volunteer, as long as you are interested in working with BAVeg to promote veganism, please join us for this dinner meeting on January 29th, 2009 at 6 pm at Udupi Palace restaurant in SF.

Turn your resolutions to help animals, be more active, and promote veganism into actionable solutions!

We look forward to meeting and working with you in 2009.

Cheers,
Tammy and Chris
co-founders of BAVeg