October 1-7, 2013: International Vegetarian Week!

International Vegetarian Week's logo

October 1-7 is International Vegetarian Week! According to IVW's website:

• "October 1 is the World Vegetarian Day
• October 2 is the World Farm Animal's Day
• October 4 is the World Animal Day"

 They offer some tips on how you can help to raise awareness for this special occasion:

"As an individual:

• Send letters to newspapers or magazines, sharing your experience;
• Participate in leaflet distributing events;
• Invite friends or family to a vegetarian dinner;
• Join your local vegetarian organisation;
• Ask for vegetarian meals and talk about the vegetarian week at your local restaurants;
• Speak to local clergy, educators, media and other people, stressing the multiple benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle."
  [For info on what non-profit organizations and for-profit companies can do to celebrate International Vegetarian Week, please go to http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Article-36-Call%2Bfor%2BAction.html.]

These are great ideas, but I'd like to add a few more:

•  At your school or workplace, offer free vegan food for anyone to try, and provide some vegan literature that people can take home with them. A good source of reliable vegan literature is Mercy for Animals' "25 Reasons to Try Vegetarian" booklet. This booklet may say "vegetarian" on the cover, but once you look inside, you'll see that it actually promotes veganism.  You can order these booklets for free or for a donation, or you can simply look at the PDF file online.
• Wear vegan-promoting clothes and buttons.
• Put up posters (with permission, if needed) on telephone poles, community centre bulletin boards, etc. advertising for veganism! I'd recommend not using the International Vegetarian Week posters, because they adverstise for simply vegetarianism and not necessarily veganism. Even so, why not make your own poster? Or you can find other ones online.
• Celebrate World Vegetarian Day (held by the North American Vegetarian Society) on October 1st. (Their website is different from the International Vegetarian Week one, and it's more colourful and easy to navigate. It can be found here: http://www.worldvegetarianday.org/.) Here are some ways you can get involved in World Vegetarian Day:
• If you're not already vegetarian, try veganism for the month of October. If you already follow a plant-based diet, get your non-vegetarian friends to pledge to go meatless for a month. Participants can win prizes!
• Go to their website and click on "What you can do" to get an extensive list of ideas of other ways for anyone to help!

North American Vegetarian Society logo

• Do something for World Day for Farmed Animals (held by the Farm Animal Rights Movement, or FARM). You can search for an event on http://www.dayforanimals.org/. There is even an event going on in Ottawa-- but of course, there are many other events in many other cities as well.

Logo for the World Day for Farmed Animals

• For World Animal Day, sign up to hold an event or join an event through their website: http://www.worldanimalday.org.uk/.

World Animal Day logo

• E-mail International Vegetarian Week to tell them about what you plan to do for this event. They will publish this on www.vegetarianweek.org and on www.evana.org.

Have a nice rest of the weekend!