Help Celebrate World Go Vegan Week & Giveaway!!

The 4th annual WORLD GO VEGAN WEEK is coming up October 25 - 31, 2009. This week is a celebration of compassion and a time to take action for animals, the environment, and everyone's well-being.

In Defense of Animals is encouraging organizations and individuals to use this time to educate their communities about the vegan lifestyle as a compassionate, sustainable, and healthy way of eating and living. Check here for links and info!

Here are some ways you can celebrate World GO VEGAN Week. The full list here.

•Plan an event or activity to get people interested in veganism, such as a public lecture, cooking demonstration, feed-in with vegan food samples, leafleting, tabling, library exhibit, or street theater performance. If you serve vegan food at your event, you can get refunded for the cost through the VegFund.
•Contact your local paper and encourage them to publish vegan recipes or a vegan article. There is an“editor’s pack” that you can send to your local newspaper with information and vegan recipes. Contact Hope Bohanec, hope@idausa.org, to have it sent to you.
•Host a vegan potluck dinner or restaurant outing to show your family and friends that they don't have to sacrifice taste to save animals' lives. Sharing delicious vegan food with others is a fun and easy way to make a difference in the lives of animals and the people you care about.
•Ask your local natural foods store to offer vegan samples for the week. Ask your favorite local food store to offer vegan samples or specials for the last week of October. Let them know that we can send information, posters and materials to help them celebrate World Go Vegan Week.
•Ask veg-friendly restaurants to offer discounts or specials on their vegan food. Encourage restaurants to have vegan specials for the week or to offer a discount for bringing in a veg-curious customer.
•Host a vegan pie-baking contest. You can do this in your own home in a public place. Offer prizes like gift certificates to veggie restaurants or IDA T-shirts. Don't you want to be a judge? Yum!
•Host a Vegan Halloween Party. Have a costume party and have prizes for the best animal costume, most compassionate, and the most vegan creative! Have vegan Halloween candy and treats on hand and go trick-or-treating, offering folks at the door vegan candy and brochures.
•Send a friend or family member who lives far away a gift certificate to a restaurant in their own town. Visit Happy Cow for reviews of vegetarian restaurants around the country.
•Encourage meat-eating family and friends to try Meat Out Monday and give meatless meals a try for one day a week. If they sign up for the newsletter, they get reminders, recipes and inspriation in a weekly newsletter. Go to: http://www.meatoutmonday.org/.
•Write a letter to the editor about the benefits of a vegan diet or the cruelties of factory farming, or ask your local newspaper to write a story on the subject.
•Enter cooking competitions and bake sales using vegan recipes. Emphasize the fact that you didn't use any animal ingredients to make your delicious dishes. Attend cooking competitions and support the vegan entries.
•Visit a farmed animal sanctuary and take a friend who still eats meat. There are a number of farmed animal sanctuaries where you can visit rescued cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, ducks, goats, sheep and rabbits live naturally in peace and harmony without fear of abuse or slaughter. Check out Animal Acres, Animal Place, Farm Sanctuary, Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary, or IDA's Project Hope.
•Join or start a vegan dinner club. Find veg-friendly restaurants and invite the community for dinner. Try a different restaurant every month.
•Encourage a Compassionate Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks, talk to your community food banks about providing vegan options such as Tofurkys. Consider buying a few Tofurkys, preparing them, and bringing them to your food bank or other similar community dinner. Be sure to check out Gentle Thanksgiving which offers a lot of information and guidance on this special observance.
•Share the ideals of veganism with your community of friends and colleagues by adding this quote to your email signature:
"Veganism gives us all the opportunity to say what we 'stand for' iin life -- the ideal of healthy, humane living. Add decades of health to your life, with a clear conscience as a bonus." - Donald Watson
•Create a plan to promote veganism all year.

Read more at the site and Happy Go Vegan Week!!

To celebrate World Go Vegan Week here, I am hosting a Pixiepine Giveaway!

Up for grabs is a variety of vegan smoothie and drink mixes.I often use these and other mixes to make healthy and easy drinks to keep me energized and happy :)

• Amazing Grass' Chocolate Green Superfood Drink
• Biochem's Chocolate Vegan Protein Mix
• Biochem's Vanilla Vegan Protein Mix
• Enzymatic Therapy's Strawberry-Kiwi PMS Escape 
• Vega's Whole Food Smoothie Infusion

Here is How to Enter:
*Leave a comment with your name...easy!
For extra entries:
* Become a Follower
(if you already follow, just mention that you do in your comment)

* Follow me on Twitter and Tweet about this giveaway.

*Grab a Button:)

* For 3 bonus entries,

(be sure to leave a separate comment for each one!),

blog about this post with a link to Pixiepine (http://cuppapixie.blogspot.com/)


*Fine Print: Please leave a valid email address in your comment so I can contact you. Giveaway will end at midnight 10/29 and winner will be announced 10/30. Winner will be chosen via random.org. Good luck!