As the movement towards peace and love on planet Earth becomes more prevalent, we are challenged to refine our communication for maximum effect. Veganism is an integral part of deconstructing the violence in society, and a deeper understanding of the nuance of carnism is needed.
You don’t have to be vegan to be pro-vegan, and if one does identify as vegan, then more power to them. We regularly spotlight vegan artist and organisations that are creating change with their lived purpose, and Dr Melanie Joy is an incredible example of someone who has developed and implemented advocacy training for over a decade.
She specializes in strategic vegan advocacy; effective communication; resilient teams and leadership; inclusivity and diversity; relational literacy; the psychology of social transformation; and sustainable advocacy.
She is a psychologist, educator, international speaker, organizational consultant, and relationship coach, as well as the author of six books, including the award-winning Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows; Beyond Beliefs: A Guide to Improving Relationships and Communication for Vegans, Vegetarians, and Meat Eaters; Getting Relationships Right; Strategic Action for Animals; and The Vegan Matrix.
She is the even the eighth recipient of the Ahimsa Award—previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela—for her work on global nonviolence, and she is the founding president of Beyond Carnism.
Beyond Carnism is designed to help us be better advocates for the ever expanding movement, and they have just released two online courses Sustainable Vegan Advocacy and Effective Vegan Advocacy.
The Sustainable Vegan Advocacy online course is designed to help vegan advocates prevent the tremendous loss of time, energy, and resources caused by unsustainability and burnout and enable us to become more resilient.
Meanwhile, Effective Vegan Advocacy can support vegans in understanding the psychology of eating animals, empowering us to adapt our advocacy for the greatest possible impact. We will also learn a wide range of strategies for making our vegan advocacy significantly more productive, strengthening the power of the vegan movement as a whole.
The courses contain easy-to-digest videos in which Melanie provides advocates with evidence-based, practical tools that can significantly increase one’s positive impact for the cause. The videos are supported by learning exercises and resources. And as the courses are online, they can be completed in your own time and at your own pace.
We have been digesting the courses and are in love with Melanie’s style of advocacy, where she has applied her immense knowledge into a super relatable way of communicating. Many of us have made mistakes whilst advocating, and learnt the hard way, these courses allow us, and newer vegans, to improve their skillset and deal with obstacles in the best and most efficient manner. Applying love energy to our activism is super important, as for many of us this will be a lifetime’s work.
Beyond Carnism is a US-based, international organization dedicated to exposing and transforming carnism, the invisible belief system that conditions people to eat certain animals.
Carnism causes extensive suffering. Animal agriculture is responsible for the unnecessary slaughter of 72 billion land animals and between one and three trillion fish and other aquatic animals worldwide per year, and it is a major contributor to environmental degradation, human disease, and human rights violations. However, the majority of people who eat animals are unaware that they are contributing to such destruction.
At Beyond Carnism, they believe that people need and deserve to know the truth about carnism, so they can make their food choices freely—because without awareness, there is no free choice.
Beyond Carnism seeks to empower both nonvegans and vegan advocates through awareness raising and training, to help create a more just and compassionate world for all beings, human and nonhuman alike.
They tell us, “Our metamission is to help create a more relational world, carnism and other oppressive systems condition us to relate to others—human and nonhuman—in a way that is relationally dysfunctional, or “nonrelational.” Relational dysfunction is also a key driver of ineffective advocacy, unsustainability and burnout, and infighting. We are therefore committed to both promoting and practicing relational literacy, the understanding of and ability to practice healthy ways of relating.”
We are grateful for all of the work that Beyond Carnism do, and how they are helping the community expand and communicate our message of love and peace in the most effective way possible. You can subscribe to the courses here:
