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Join a Local Vegan Group

Starting any new hobby, lifestyle, diet, or spiritual practice requires you to have a community of people and teachers around you to offer support. Because becoming vegan encompasses all these things, joining a local vegan group can help ensure your success. Membership in a local group gets you in touch with like-minded people who you can share activities and meals with. These folks ideally live close by and can offer you nuts-and-bolts support with vegan living.

To find local groups of like-minded veggie lovers:

Look at your local health food store bulletin board, which may list meetings of local supper clubs.

Ask the local college if it has any student-run vegan groups. Even if you aren’t eligible to join, the group may be willing to share some local resources with you.

Ask the servers, owner, and chef at your local vegan-friendly restaurant if they know of any groups, meetings, or experts living nearby.

Check the events sections in your local newspapers and nickel ads. They may list vegan festivals, speakers, or potlucks.

Join a Few Online Vegan Groups

Meeting up with local vegans is only part of your new community. You can find thousands more online! The Internet can connect you to every aspect of veganism: shopping, cooking, dating, political activism, and community building. Here are some of the best resources to get you started:

MeetUp.com: vegan.meetup.com

Vegans World Network: www.vegansworldnetwork.org

The Vegan Forum: www.veganforum.com

Throw a Totally Vegan Birthday Party

Bring your vegan and nonvegan friends together and throw yourself (or someone else) a totally vegan birthday! This winning strategy combines what we love best about living vegan: great food, fun, cool new things, and cake.

By throwing your own party, you can introduce your favorite new recipes to friends and family to show off your burgeoning culinary skills. Here are some things to do to ensure success:

Choose fun party foods to entice nonvegans to the buffet table. These are just a few options: tofu chicken fingers, decadent vegan cake or cupcakes with piped frosting, stuffed mushrooms, seven-layer dip, olives, stuffed grape leaves, spiced nuts, fruit salad served in a scooped-out watermelon, hummus, crackers, chips, salsa, and guacamole. The choices are endless. Part IV is your guide to cooking vegan. Check it out.

Set up a bar with beer, wine, juice, seltzer, and cocktail mixers. Offer olives, cherries, lemon and lime slices, and lots of ice. Borrow glass tumblers from friends or family or pick up a dozen at your local thrift store. They’re reusable and can always be donated, which is cooler and more “free-gan” than throwing out paper cups. (See the later section “Be More Free-Gan with Used Goods.”)

Ask the invitees to dress as nice as they can without wearing any leather, silk, wool, or fur. Throwing a dress-up party always makes the event more festive, and this little twist encourages your nonvegan friends to think a little bit about what they wear on a daily basis.

Write About Veganism

Every year the Vegetarian Resource Group holds a contest for the best essay written on the topic of vegetarian and vegan living. Entering the contest helps you form your ideas and arguments into a logical, well-formulated framework, and can win you some notoriety and a $50 savings bond! Visit www.vrg.org/essay for more details. You must be under 19 to enter.

Adults can set their pens to paper as well, however. Writing an article or op-ed piece for your local paper is a great way to focus your passion and express a point of view that others in your community may not have considered. Whether you’re compelled to write about a recent puppy mill scandal in your home state or the terrible nutrition standards in your school cafeteria, your voice will help to broaden the debate. Make it known within the article that you’re vegan, what that means, and why it’s relevant to the issue at hand.

Hold a Fundraiser for Your Local No-Kill