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Level 3: Go All Out for Animals
Promote Animal Rights on Cable-Access TV!
Videos that depict the cruelty of factory farms, laboratories, circuses, and fur farms are extremely effective tools for convincing people to lead more compassionate lives. Find out how you can air PETA’s best videos on your local cable-access station for free!
 Give a Speech—or Sponsor a Speaker
Giving a presentation about vegetarianism is a lot easier than you might think! Many local schools, public libraries, civic clubs, and places of worship are happy to host local citizens who want to give lectures. Animal rights, environmental, and social justice groups at local colleges are often excited to sponsor presentations at their schools.
When preparing, feel free to use any of the resources available on our Web site. You can model your speech on our “Veganism in a Nutshell” lecture, or you can just gather facts from different sections of our Web site. (Focusing your lecture on two or three key concepts is often a wise decision. For example, you could discuss how eating meat hurts animals, our health, and the environment. Also, pictures from our photo gallery make great visual aids. Showing videos is an incredibly good way to ensure effective presentations—we recommend “Meet Your Meat” and “Chew on This.” (You can download both videos for free, or you can e-mail VegInfo@peta.org to order a free CD-ROM or DVD copy.) Always be sure to give attendees something to walk away with—PETA's vegetarian starter kit is a great choice. You can buy copies, or if money is tight, e-mail us to order some for free.
Public speaking is easy—just practice beforehand, and relax during the actual lecture. If you'd like a bit of help, try Toastmasters.org or check to see if your local community college offers public-speaking classes.
If you're more of a behind-the-scenes organizer than a public speaker, sponsoring a speaker is a great option. E-mail us at VegInfo@peta.org and tell us your city, what topics you want to cover, and a possible location for the speech, and we'll try to help find a speaker.
Start Your Own Animal Rights Group
You can do a lot on your own, but you can do even more with friends. PETA’s “Start a Group” pack will provide you with lots of great tools to get started. The pack includes our “Guide to Becoming an Activist,” our “Guide to Grassroots Activism,” a literature catalog, a video/multimedia brochure, and information about our Activist Network. Request a free “Start a Group” pack.
Read our “Guide to Becoming an Activist” online.
Please also consider signing up for PETA's Activist Network. We'll keep you up-to-date with action alerts and activism tips, and we will let you know when there is a PETA event in your area.
Are you in high school or college? Check out peta2.com for tips on getting active in your school and for opportunities to win great prizes and to hear from today's hottest musicians.
 Advertise! Place PETA's Pro-Vegan Ads Around Your Town
The animal flesh, egg, and dairy industries spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on advertising. While animal rights activists can’t match the funds of these corporate giants, we can make a strong statement and turn many heads by using clever, catchy ads to expose the truth about these industries.
Placing an ad in your local newspaper is a good way to get the word out. Some college and weekly newspapers, newsletters, and Web sites may even run the ads for free as a form of public service. View our colorful pro-vegan ads. Send an e-mail message to PETA’s advertising manager when you find an ad that you’d like to place.
PETA’s billboards are hard to ignore, and they can influence thousands of people to think about animal rights. View PETA’s pro-vegetarian billboard designs. Once you’ve chosen a design, find a billboard placement company under “Outdoor Advertising” in your local yellow pages. Show a copy of the artwork to the company for its approval, and make sure that you can afford the cost of both the space and the print production (we typically rent billboard space for one month). Send us an e-mail that includes the size of the billboard. Since you’re paying for the billboard, we’re also happy to change the text slightly or to replace PETA’s name with your group’s name and contact information. We’ll also help you let your local media know about the billboard if you’d like.
On a tight budget? Many billboard companies, bus shelter advertisers, and even newspapers and magazines will donate unused space to nonprofit groups like PETA. A bit of time on the phone with your local advertising representatives can help us reach thousands of people. Activists in Honolulu discovered that there is plenty of free advertising space on buses and other spots for nonprofit groups. Other places to look for free advertising space include airports, train and subway stations, sports facilities, and even billboard companies and radio or TV stations. Call around to find out what’s available in your town, and we’ll help you place our vegetarian ads and public service announcements.
Teach a College or Continuing Education ‘VEG 101’ Course
Many of the larger communities in North America offer the opportunity to teach a course at “alternative” colleges or in continuing education programs. Call local colleges and your town hall and ask them about these opportunities. Work with program directors to design a class about animal rights. Send us an e-mail message if you have any questions or if you need assistance.
Check out the PETA Bookstore for books that you can use in your class. Send us an e-mail message with the number of students you have, and we’ll send you a free vegetarian starter kit for each of them.
 Teach a Vegan Cooking Class
Most local community colleges, health food stores, and grocery stores would be delighted to give you space to teach a one-evening vegetarian cooking course. Most will advertise the course for you, and many grocery stores, such as Wholefoods, will even provide you with free food for the class (it’s good for business because it brings people into the store). Along with your own handouts, provide copies of PETA’s free vegetarian starter kit for everyone who attends your class. We’ll send you as many as you need.
PETA’s own Dr. Alka Chandna conducted vegan workshops for years and has written a guide to help others start their own. Her complete how-to booklet explains why and how to run a vegetarian workshop, complete with menus, recipes, sample public service announcements, and suggested talking points. To order this helpful booklet and free vegetarian starter kits for your class, please send us an e-mail message. Read excerpts from her booklet.
Create a Guide to Vegetarian Dining in Your Area
How many times have you heard someone say, “I’d like to be a vegetarian, but it’s too hard! It’s just not convenient enough.” We’ve heard it way too many times. Many people are convinced that vegans can’t eat out or order pizza at 3 a.m. As we all know, nothing could be further from the truth, and veggie dining guides are a great way to let everyone else know it, too. You can make a simple guide out of a few pieces of paper and a list of all the best places to eat in your area, or you can create a more detailed, complete guide with the instructions below.
If there are animal rights or vegetarian groups in your area, ask if they have any funds to help you pay for your guide. Sometimes, local printers will give discounts to nonprofit organizations, and some may even print the guide for free! If you can raise the funds, printed wallet-sized guides are ideal, but you could also make a vegetarian dining Web site for your area (www.vegseattle.com and www.vegohio.com are great examples) or post a .pdf file to an existing Web site and let people download and print the guide themselves. Online guides are also easy to update. To download and view PETA’s vegetarian-friendly restaurant guide for Hampton Roads, please click here. There are many different ways to create a more detailed, complete guide with these instructions.
‘Veganize’ Your School or Work Cafeteria!
Work with your school or office cafeteria to ensure that more vegetarian options are available on their menus. This is one of the most effective ways to help stop the abuse of animals on factory farms—every vegetarian meal served is a victory for animals. Providing information about vegetarianism to classmates and coworkers while making sure that they have access to cruelty-free food is a sure-fire way to effectively promote compassion!
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