April 2009 Archives

The Bridges presentations have been going great with the introduction of vegan food samples. We've already given away about 50 Primal Sticks and a couple hundred Silk milks to some pretty excited students. We've received many comments of appreciation and have yet to hear a criticism of the products.

Earlier this month we had a training meeting where I practiced the Animals in Science presentation. It's still a work in progress to get it just right and provided an opportunity for others to get a taste of how a practice presentation goes.

CAA's Writers Group (WG) has been a bunch of busy little bees lately!  This will be my third week in a Citizen Journalism course through Minneapolis Community Education.  So far, it has been a great opportunity to learn about the growing trend of citizen journalism, how that ties into journalism in general, and how to write better articles.  It's interesting to think about how much our access to "news" has changed just in the past decade.  I've also been able to network with folks from the Twin Cities Daily Planet (http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/). 

Last Wednesday, several of the WG folks attended a free workshop and booksigning at the Loft.  Louise Dunlap, author of Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing, had us think about and discuss what we could write to defend the Earth, world peace, and social justice  It was awesome to meet more members of the WG and the short time we spent "workshopping" was inspiring, valuable, and thought-provoking.  I am very excited to begin reading Louise's book.  Thanks to Cari Lombardi, Marion Robison, and Matt Schmittdiel for taking the time out of your busy schedules to attend this awesome workshop! 

There have been several new additions to the WG since I've last posted including Rachel Keranen who recently got her letter published in the City Pages!  Great work, Rachel!  Use this link to check out her awesome letter:  http://www.citypages.com/2009-04-08/news/readers-respond-to-diablo-cody-s-fempire/

CAA's Writers Group has exciting endeavors in the near future!  We will soon be working on a series of articles to be published in newsletters as well as possible op-ed pieces for local publications! 

If you have any creative writing ideas, would like more information about the Writers Group, or if you would like to join our team, please contact me at kristine.volovsek@exploreveg.org

PEACE

Hey everyone!

Sadly, we had a pretty low turnout at tonights meeting. We were able to discuss some things however. Our student group registration for 2009/2010 is almost complete. Nicholas is trying to get the housing sustainability committee to get back to him about promoting vegetarianism for sustainability.

The CAA Fifth Annual Fundraising Banquet had great food and a record turn out with most of the volunteer tasks going smoothly. The dine-out at the Himalayan Restaurant went really well, the staff treated them well, had great food and had many new attendees due to Meetup.com. The Film and panel on Christianity and animal issues needs more advertising! Please come by the CAA office to pick up posters to hang up or leaflets to hand out!

Leafleting at Nickelback, Lily Allen, Alkaline Trio was all successful and there is an upcoming leafletting opportunity at the Action Sports World Tour on April 25 around 10 PM. Email Carolyn if you can help! We discussed summer meetings, but out of us at the meeting we didn't think a whole lot of people would be able or willing to come and that meetings wouldn't be very productive with so few attendees. For Veg Week next semester we did some brainstorming and Nicholas came up with the great idea of having a sustainability theme. We all hope to have fall meetings on Mondays at 4:00. Our next and last meeting before the end of the semester is on Tues, May 5th.

In the last week, we have given out over 1,000 leaflets! 700 were given out at the Britney Spears concert on Fri, April 3rd and 475 at the Nickelback concert on Tues, April 7th. Both were at the Target Center, so there were many people streaming out of the doors. Both crowds were not the best. There were many people at the Britney Spears concert who were rude and dropped leaflets on the ground while looking me in the eye. No one did that at the Nickelback concert, but there were many middle aged couples attending who were uninterested in accepting leaflets. Overall, they were still great, because of the number of leaflets we were able to hand out. Both concerts had people playing drums outside of the Target Center, which made for a fun and exciting atmosphere.

Leafleting at these two concerts has been a great improvement on the last few months. It had been rainy, snowy, and cold, but with the weather getting better, it is more fun to go out leafleting. On Friday, April 17th there will be a Travis Concert at Fine Line Music Cafe. We should arrive by 11:00 pm. And on Saturday, April 18th Alkaline Trio will be playing at First Avenue. We should arrive by 9:00 pm. If you would like to help, please email me at carolyn.soley@exploreveg.org.

Hey everyone!

Tonight's meeting went pretty well overall...

For updates, the dineout at Midori's Floating World Cafe went really well and had a vegan menu of Japenese food. The vegan breakfast foods cooking class went really well, 25 people showed up and they learned to make vegan french toast, bacon and omelets. We discussed having future cooking classes on weekends to make it more convenient. The Writer's Group is doing an article about what to use for egg decorating this Easter. The Britney Spears concert was a huge success! We got out 700 leaflets, but unfortunately there were some really rude fans there.

For upcoming events, the film panel on Christianity and animal issues is April 29th and we need help to getting the word out.  The camping trip is scheduled for May 22 through the 24th in Prior Lake. The campsite sounds great! We just need to figure out the food/water situation. A date and coordinator for the volunteer appreciation party still needs to be figured out.  Brandon could really use some more volunteers to help him do tabling in Coffman.

Our next meeting is Tues, April 21 at 7:30 in Coffman, the room is to be determined. We were thinking of having meetings fall semester on Mondays at 4:00.

That's all!

Hello everyone!

I'd like to introduce myself--my name is Nicholette Zeliadt, I'm a grad student at the U and I've been been managing CAA's Twitter account for the last couple of weeks. I "tweet" about recent news stories that are relevant to animal rights and veganism, and upcoming CAA events.

Follow CAA on Twitter (search for 'exploreveg') and stay up to date on the latest veg-related news! If you have suggestions or items you'd like to see posted on Twitter, email me at nicholette.zeliadt@exploreveg.org.

Hope to see you on Twitter!
Nicholette

It's been a busy first quarter for Bridges! We met four times to introduce people to the program, practice presenting, and go over what Bridges needs for success.

We gave 27 presentations including a MNPLS community event with mostly elderly guests. In contrast we gave the Circle of Compassion presentation for two groups of 6th-8th grade students who were attending workshops at the St Cloud U. Out of workshops consisting of racial discrimination, gender discrim, religious discrim, art as a tool against war, gang violence and so on, animal rights was the most requested workshop! So much so, the coordinator had us present simultaneously but, in different rooms, with the St Cloud animal rights group for the second of three workshops that day. Essentially, that arrangement made it possible to have four workshops on animal rights in a three workshop day in order to meet the high demand.

We also presented at Chippewa Middle, Washington Middle, Como Park High, Mounds View ALC, Anoka High, Edina High, and eight times including an auditorium of students at Cretin Derham High Catholic School.

At Como High we gave away our first vegan food samples toward the end of class (on Meatout)  thanks to a grant from Vegfund! Silk brand soy milks were a smash hit with the students and the teacher. She took alot of great pics!

 

Hey everyone! I'm excited to write my first blog entry for CAA meetings!

Well here goes..

      For updates, we discussed the Valentine's Day potluck and thought it might be cool for next time to have recipes available for the dishes that were brought. UDS apparently declined to have a second Veg-Night, but we were thinking of all filling out UDS comment cards one meeting and giving them our opinion on this and other vegetarian options. We thought we should try to do more tabling at cafeterias because its a good place to do veg outreach. Sadly, Chris P. Carrot is being deleted on facebook. Nicholas is going to re-register our student group in April, and our current office space is renewed for the 2009-20010 school year.

      For upcoming events, we discussed having a camping trip this summer, upcoming dine-outs, leafletting opportunites, and cooking classes. We also briefly discussed the upcoming CAA Fifth Annual Fundraising Banquet, Tony Diggs Award and Reception, and the Their Lives, Our Voices Conference this summer. Hopefully for all of the above we will get lots of volunteers/ attendees!

      Since not many of us were at the meeting, we had trouble deciding when we should hold the next one. We decided to try it at the same time and day once more, and if attendance doesn't improve we can always make some adjustments. We chose Tuesday, April 7th at 7:30 for our next meeting in Coffman room 305.

That's all!