Raising Veg Kids
FOLLOW US!
  • Blog
  • Veg Pregnancy
    • Veg Baby Shower
  • Veg Babies
  • Veg Kids
    • Fun Activities/Products
  • Animal-Friendly Vacations
    • Animal Sanctuaries
  • Holidays
  • Contact Us

Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale: Fun for the Whole Family!

3/4/2014

4 Comments

 
Looking for a fun, meaningful event to do with your kids? How about a vegan bake sale! Join one that's already happening in your area, or start your own! People from all over the world are participating in the 6th annual Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale that takes place this year between April 26 - May 4. Make it a fun family day--involve the kids through baking, promoting the sale, setting up the table, handling the money, picking the organization to donate the proceeds to, and more. Together, families can help raise awareness one delicious vegan bite at a time...
Picture
Photo by Tara Keramaty.
Sixth Annual Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale-- April 26 through May 4, 2014


GUEST POST by Gary
Loewenthal from Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale
Vegan bake sales are a unique blend of fun, outreach, fundraising, and community:
  • It's fun to see what everyone made, and to see customers enjoying your bake sale's tasty creations.
  • Delicious vegan cookies, cupcakes, banana bread, and other baked goods can be a surprisingly effective outreach tool. Often one bite can change a skeptic's impression of vegan food, and melt away fears that it is boring or unsatisfying.
  • Bake sales are a time-tested and popular fundraising technique.
  • At a bake sale, you're likely to meet others in your community and swap recipes, and get a wonderful sense of community.
Picture
Petey from Inhabitots.com
So what is the WVBS? It's almost too simple but maybe that's the key to its success over the last five years:

Each year, around the end of April and the beginning of May, groups all over the world hold vegan bake sales. Each participating group signs up on the WVBS web site, but has complete control over its bake sale, including what to sell and what to do with the proceeds. Anyone can participate. If you can't do it during the “official” week, you can do it as close that week as possible. That's it!

Picture
Bake sale in Bethesda, MD.

The WVBS provides great opportunities for family involvement. For example:
  • You don't have to be an official group to hold a bake sale. Over the years, informal groups of friends, as well as kids on the front porch have organized successful bake sales as part of the WVBS.
  • School clubs and classes have participated. One advantage of doing it this way is that you already have an excellent place to hold and advertise your bake sale- the school!
  • Church, synagogue, mosque, or other religious groups can participate (and have participated) in the same fashion.
  • Girl or boy scout troops- same deal!
  • Moms and dads can help in all sorts of ways: serving food, decorating the bake sale table, handling the money at the bake sale, promoting, folding to-go boxes, taking pictures, and so forth.
  • Family Meetup groups- for example, this year the NYC Vegetarian and Vegan Families Meetup group will be hosting a family vegan bake sale on April 27. Location TBD. Join meetup to stay posted.

The WVBS web site has tons of tips on how to have a great bake sale, from finding locations to connecting with bakers to getting the word out to setting prices. You probably will not find a more complete reference for bake sales.

                                                    Photos above from Bianca Phillips at VeganCrunk.blogspot.com
If organizing your own bake sale isn't practical, you can check the WVBS schedule to see if there's a participating vegan bake sale near you, and if so, there are lots of opportunities for both kids and adults to help out with that event:
  • Bake something for it.
  • See if you can get a local bakery to donate items.
  • Help promote the bake sale.
  • Volunteer to help out at the table.
Note: If the sponsoring group is a registered charity, high school students may be able to receive community service credits by volunteering at the bake sale.

I want to suggest one last very simple but crucial thing you can do to help out vegan bake sales and the WVBS. But first...
Picture
Kerstin's Ⓥ kitchen

Bake sales are a great way for families to have fun and do good at the same time. With vegan bake sales specifically, you're helping to create a more peaceful and compassionate world. Other articles on this web site talk about the cruelty of dairy and eggs, so there's no need to repeat that here. But one of the many disturbing aspects of dairy and egg production-- and this applies to organic, free-range, and small operations, too-- is that it destroys animals' families. Baby calves are torn from their mothers on dairy farms, and egg-laying hens are denied growing up with a mother (almost all come from industrial hatcheries and are shipped to their destinations). Cows and hens are often looked upon as the epitome of doting, tender mothers. By showing people the deliciousness of vegan baked goods, you're gently but perhaps quite convincingly opening their eyes to a kinder alternative. To a degree, vegan bake sales are families helping families.

And now for the final tip...if you don't have the time or other resources to organize or help out at a participating vegan bake sale, there is something else you can do, which is essential and very easy and enjoyable: Attend the nearest participating bake sale in your area, buy some tasty treats, contribute to a worthy cause, and support your local, talented, hard-working, creative vegan bakers!

BIG THANK YOU to Gary Loewenthal for organizing such an important worldwide event!

NOTE
: If you are in the New York City area, the NYC Vegetarian and Vegan Families Meetup group will be hosting a family vegan bake sale on April 27. Location TBD. Join meetup to stay posted.


Picture
Bianca Phillips from VeganCrunk.blogspot.com

Join the Sixth Annual Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale on April 26 through May 4, 2014
If you're in NYC...
RSVP to join the NYC Vegetarian and Vegan Families Meetup bake sale on May 3rd from 1-3pm at Peacefood Cafe. Or stop by for some tasty vegan treats! All proceeds will be donated to Catskill Animal Sanctuary.

4 Comments

Where Little Hearts Can Sing- Catskill Animal Sanctuary a Welcome Haven for Human Animals, Too!

1/10/2012

6 Comments

 
In this post, Kathy Stevens, director and founder of Catskill Animal Sanctuary (CAS) tells us why it's so important for kids to meet farm animals. She encourages families to come visit the cows, pigs, horses, chickens, rabbits, turkeys and goats living at the sanctuary. If you are raising your kids vegetarian or vegan, visiting CAS is a must. Starting in March they will have accomodations on site, so you can stay right at the sanctuary! 

Picture


Guest post by Kathy Stevens, founder and director of Catskill Animal Sanctuary
It’s seven in the morning. Kathy Keefe, Catskill Animal Sanctuary’s (CAS) farm manager, is stacking dishes on a cart inside the main barn’s spacious feed room. The pig dishes are piled and overflowing with broccoli, apples, tomatoes, beans, and pumpkin; the horse dishes are each different from the other, depending on the nutritional needs of the Sanctuary’s resident equines, and the same is true for the chicken dishes. Heavy broiler chickens who struggle under industry-induced obesity get a low-calorie diet, while others get calorie-dense sunflower seeds and cracked corn mixed in with their grain-based diet. All the chickens get leafy greens, too, and even the broilers get to snack on an occasional grape or banana slice. One dish gets glucosamine, another an iron supplement, electrolytes in a third and Omega 3’s in a fourth. That’s the level of individual care the animals at Catskill Animal Sanctuary receive.
The notion that whether human or hen, we are all individuals and should be treated as such permeates every aspect of CAS, and I believe it’s the main reason families flock to us.

When you bring your kids to CAS, for instance, you’ll find that there’s no such thing as a “standard tour” at our 110-acre farm animal sanctuary. Instead, your family is apt to be greeted in the parking lot by a member of the Underfoot Family-- a pig or chicken, turkey or goat who, for one reason or another, is happier roaming freely than living among members of his/her species. So be forewarned, a human may well walk out to greet you, but so might Rambo the sheep, Mike the rooster, or Arthur the goat.

Next, you’ll find that your tour guide will want to know the names of your children, how old they are, and whether they’ve ever kissed a pig or napped with a cow. There’s no “script” at CAS, so I can’t promise that these will be the exact questions; but what I can promise is this: that from the moment you arrive, your child will be actively included in the experience of visiting Catskill Animal Sanctuary. In fact, when tour groups are filled with families with young children, they often don’t move too far and definitely don’t move too fast. Why? Because kids need to sit on the ground, eye to eye, with Ethel the turkey. Because kids need to walk slowly into the rabbit enclosure and sit quietly (“Pretend to be a rock,” we say) as the shy creatures inch closer, perhaps sniffing a knee, before hopping away. And because kids need to lie on their bellies, heads in their hands, watching the pigs do what pigs do: root, flop down in the pond on a hot day, press their cool wet snouts through the fence to say hello. 
 
When you’re raising vegetarian/vegan kids, or moving along that path, visiting places where food animals are happy and right there, in your face, reinforces all that you’re doing at home. When children have had the chance to be kissed by a cow, choosing a different meal simply affirms their innate kindness and deepens their bond with our animal friends. 


We recently received an e-mail from a proud mom. Her son Henry, now ten years old, has attended our children’s day camp, Camp Kindness, for two summers in a row, and has since become a passionate and committed vegan. Henry and his family were recently out at dinner with family friends, and Henry was questioned by the grown-ups about his diet. According to his mom, after very eloquently listing several animal, health, and environmental reasons for his decision, Henry looked at the grown-ups and said, “So I think that the question shouldn’t be about why I’m vegetarian…the question should be about why you aren’t.”

Picture
Picture
Camp Kindness vegan bake sale

Come share the love. Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties, NY is open for tours Saturdays and Sundays April through October. The Homestead, our four-room inn, will be open year-round, seven days a week, beginning in March so you can plan your trip and stay right at the farm! Camp Kindness, which holds week-long sessions in July and August, will begin registering children in April. We hope to see you soon!


Note from Editor: My husband and I visited CAS a few years before our daughter, Charlotte was born, and can attest to the fact that it is truly a beautiful haven for rescued farm animals. The animals who live there receive so much love and attention. We can't wait to bring Charlotte this summer! The sanctuary is located within 1/2hr of the historic town of Woodstock. So make a family vacation out of it; visit the sanctuary (sleep on site), go hiking, go tubing down the Esopus River, take a train ride on the Catskill Mountain Railroad, shop, and eat at one of the many vegetarian restaurants in the area.


Kathy Stevens is the Founder and Director of CAS. Kathy moved to Boston for graduate school, and after a decade of teaching high school English, she was asked to head a charter school. Instead, one year later, she opened Catskill Animal Sanctuary, one of the country's leading havens for farm animals and a center for raising public awareness of their sentience and their suffering. She is the author of two critically and popularly-acclaimed books, "Where the Blind Horse Sings" and "Animal Camp", a regular blogger on farm animal issues for the Huffington Post, and a frequent contributor to books and articles on farm animals, vegan living, and related issues.

6 Comments
    Picture

    About Me

    Robyn Moore is a mom to two kids, whom she and her husband are raising vegan. She has a master's degree in elementary education. She has a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University and a certificate in Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education. She has organized the kids area at the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival since 2013, and is the organizer of NYC Vegetarian & Vegan Families Meetup, a book reviewer for VegBooks, and has taught English in Nepal, volunteered helping animals in South Africa, and lived abroad in Switzerland.

    Picture

    Archives

    November 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    March 2014
    December 2013
    August 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    Categories

    All
    100% Pure Kids
    21 Day Vegan Kickstart
    50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals
    Alicia Silverstone
    Alternatives To Coloring Eggs
    Alvin Ailey School
    Animal Friendly Vacations
    Animal Rights Coalition
    Animal Sanctuary
    April Dechagas
    Babe
    Battery Cage Hens
    Blackfish
    Blinders
    Books
    Books About Animals
    Bunnies
    Camp Kindness
    Catskill Animal Sanctuary
    Celeste Hill
    Chicks
    Chloe
    Chloe Coscarelli
    Chloe Jo Davis
    Christina Burke
    Christine Dorchak
    Christmas
    Coconut Whipped Cream
    Colin Campbell
    Coloring Easter Eggs
    Compassionate Kids
    Cow
    Crazy Rumors Lip Balm
    Cruelty Free Easter
    Cynthia King
    Cynthia King Dance Studio
    Dairy
    Dairy Cruelty
    Daisy’s Greyt Escape
    Dallas Rising
    Dog Racing
    Donny Moss
    Ducklings
    Easter
    Eco Birthday Party
    Eco Kids
    Egg Industry
    Eggnots
    Elephants
    Elizabeth Forel
    Ellie Aaron
    Empathy In Children
    Environmental Camp
    Equine Advocate
    Eric Hopf
    Factory Farming
    Factory Farms
    Friendship Soup
    Fruits
    Fruit Turkey Centerpiece
    Fur
    Fur And Feathers
    Fur & Feathers
    Garlic- Onion- Beet- Spinach- Mango- Carrot- Grapefruit Juice
    Gentle Living
    Gingerbread House
    Green Birthday Party
    Gretchen Primack
    Grey2k Usa
    Greyhound Racing
    Greyhounds
    Halloween
    Happy
    Healthy
    Healthy Eating
    Healthy Eating Kids
    Heart
    Heidi Rogers Mystic
    Help Animals
    Hillary Feerick
    Horse Collapse In Nyc
    Horse Cruelty
    Horton Hears A Who
    Hospcotch Nail Polish
    Hsus
    Humane Books
    Humane Education
    Humane Educators
    Humane Kids
    Humane Society Of The United States
    Ihe
    Ingrid E. Newkirk
    Ingrid Newkirk
    Institute For Humane Education
    Isa Chandra Moscowitz
    Isa Chandra Moskowitz
    Jeff Hillenbrand
    Jeff Repanich
    Jennifer Medley
    Jenniffer Gannett
    Jessica Almy
    Jill Fehrenbacher
    Joel Fuhram
    Josh Latham
    Kate Skwire
    Kathy Stevens
    Kc Theisen
    Kia Robertson
    Kidlicous
    Kids
    Kids And Animals
    Kids Book
    Kids Books
    Kids Gone Raw
    Kids Helping Animals
    Kim Korona
    Kind Kids
    Kindness
    Liz Longacre
    Lottie Hanson
    Lush Bath Bombs
    Maddie Sobel
    Marsha Rakestraw
    Meatless Monday
    Meet Your Meat
    Michelle Carr
    Michelle Schwegmann
    Milk Cruelty
    Mitch Spinach
    MOGO
    Moon Cake
    Nathalie Vanbalen
    New Year
    Nora Kramer
    Nyc Horse
    Nyc Vegetarian Food Festival
    Owen Ford
    Pcrm
    Pele
    Peta
    Peta Kids
    Rainbow Food
    Rainbow Kit
    Raising A Vegan
    Raising A Vegetarian
    Raising Compassionate Kids
    Raising Vegan Kids
    Raising Veg Kids
    Robyn Moore
    Rory Freedman
    Ruby Roth
    Sarah Gross
    Seaworld
    Skinny Bitch Bun In The Oven
    Social Justice Kids
    Star Cupcakes
    Storytime
    Susty Party
    Switch Witch
    T. Colin Campbell
    Teaching Kids About Animals
    Teachkind
    Terry Hope Romero
    Thanksgiving Kids Crafts
    That
    The Coaltion To Ban Horse Drawn Carriages
    The Rainbow Bunch
    The Rescue Princesses
    The Secret Life Of Mitch Spinach
    The Seed A Vegan Experience
    These Little Piggies Have Tofu
    Tilikum
    Today I Ate A Rainbow
    Tumeric Dye
    Turkey
    Vegan African Safari
    Vegan Babies
    Vegan Bake Sale
    Vegan Baking
    Vegan Ballet Slippers
    Vegan Birthday Party
    Vegan Camp
    Vegan Candy
    Vegan Christmas
    Vegan Christmas Cookies
    Vegan Classroom
    Vegan Conference
    Vegan Cookies
    Vegan Cooking With Kids
    Vegan Crafts
    Vegan Cupcakes
    Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World
    Vegan Dance
    Vegan Dye
    Vegan Easter
    Vegan Easter Cookies
    Vegan Easter Eggs
    Vegan Eggs
    Vegan Families
    Vegan Family
    Vegan Food
    Vegan Food Coloring
    Vegan Gift
    Vegan Gift Basket
    Vegan Gingerbread House
    Vegan Girl
    Vegan Goodie Bags
    Vegan Halloween
    Vegan Household Cleaners
    Vegan Icing
    Vegan Is Love
    Vegan Kid
    Vegan Kid Necklace
    Vegan Kids
    Vegan Kids Books
    Vegan Kids Crafts
    Vegan Kids Gifts
    Vegan Mac And Cheese
    Vegan Macaroni And Cheese
    Vegan Parent
    Vegan Parenting
    Vegan Party Decorations
    Vegan Party Favors
    Vegan Personal Care
    Vegan Pregnancy
    Vegan Present
    Vegan Product Guide
    Vegan Products
    Vegan Pumpkin Cupcakes
    Vegan Recipe
    Vegan Safari Vegan Kids
    Vegan Soup
    Vegan Sprinkles
    Vegan Teacher
    Vegan Teen
    Vegan Teenager
    Vegan Thanksgiving
    Vegan Treats
    Veg Babies
    Vegbooks
    Vegetables
    Vegetable Soup
    Vegetarian Babies
    Vegetarian Camp
    Vegetarian Easter
    Vegetarian Family
    Vegetarian Kid
    Vegetarian Kids
    Vegetarian Safari
    Vegfamily
    Veg Family
    Veggies
    Veg Kid
    Vegkids
    Veg Kids
    Vegkins
    Veg Parent
    Whales
    Whole Foods
    Wooden Eggs
    Yea Camp
    Your Time Travels
    Youth Empowered Action Camp
    Zebra
    Zoe Weil

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly
Photo used under Creative Commons from dcysurfer / Dave Young