A Vegan Advocacy Workshop With Melanie & Tobias

This Sunday I was in Delhi to take part in a one day workshop on The Art of Activism -- A guided workshop series for effective vegan advocacy by Dr. Melanie Joy & Tobias Leenaert.

_{Me with Dr. Melanie Joy & Tobias Leenaert}

This workshop was organized by FIAPO's Living Free (Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations) in collaboration with (CEVA) Centre for Effective Vegan Advocacy.

Dr. Melanie Joy is a well known Harvard educated psychologist who coined the term Carnism. She has also authored some popular books like Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Beyond Belief

Tobias Leenaert is also a well-known speaker, vegan advocate and strategist. He is the author of How to Create a Vegan World and writes a very popular blog called The Vegan Strategist.

This duo conduct workshops to teach the methodology for effevtive vegan advocacy to vegan and animal rights activists. They have already conducted several such workshops in 24 countries so far.

Since this was being done in India for the first time, I decided to attend it in New Delhi.

<sub>Dr. Melanie Joy during one of her sessions


Tobias Leenaert ending his session</sub>

It was an information packed marathon workshop that lasted whole day. Generally they do this workshop for a couple of days bur due to scarcity of time it was all squeezed into a single day.

I liked the way they presented their thoughts and ideas and their ways on resolving issues.

Many activists were feeling much better after the workshop esp. the ones who were too frustrated, depressed or feeling burnt out. The timing of this workshop happened to be just after a couple of days of the Avni incident from which many of the activists haven't still recovered. This workshop was a boon for them as it helped them feel at ease and to regain their energy for carrying on their activism ahead.

Some of the activist didn't like their take on being an apologetic vegan. But I was aware of their perspective. However, after the workshop, I spoke to Tobias about relevance of his strategies in Indian context and on how far can that take us. He was humble enough to accept that he isn't an expert on it.

Overall, this workshop was a good effort to charge and train activists. They have already mobilized over 2000 activists around the globe with these workshops. They both are good orators, knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated to make this world a better place through their work.

We need more of such goal oriented compassionate people in this world.