Vegan Ceviche

Pura Vida, Costa Rica!

We’re so excited to share with you that we’ve just launched our newest 10 Weeks to Vegan program for Latin America, Semanario Vegano Costa Rica! With the support of local activists, it has been possible to create a culturally relevant program that will provide support to those who want to give veganism a try. Here is a vegan take on a traditional fish-based dish!


The original version of this is made with soursop, which is native to tropical areas of the Americas. Since it is difficult to find in the United States, we have substituted oyster mushrooms. Let us know what you think!

Ingredients:

  • 250 grams of chipped oyster mushrooms (approx 2-1/2 cups)
  • 1 pepper
  • 1 medium white onion
  • 1 medium purple onion
  • A handful of cilantro (coriander)
  • The juice of 5-6 limes
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 teaspoon of olive oil
  • Avocado, chili pepper, and crackers

Directions:

Start by slicing the mushrooms in a shape that you like, finely chop the onions, and the sweet pepper, dice the cilantro and place everything in a bowl. Add the olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste and mix well. Squeeze the juice of 5-6 limes—it should be enough to cover part of the ingredients. Make sure everything is well mixed and let the ceviche bowl sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, this will intensify the flavor. Once you’re ready to eat it, add avocado on top and eat it with crackers.

Tip:

You can also change the base of this recipe with chickpeas, hearts of palm (palmitos), cauliflower, or texturized vegetable protein (TVP). If you miss the taste of seafood, try adding chopped seaweed, you’ll notice that this will make a huge difference!

Vegan Advocacy in India



Since 2016, Vegan Outreach has been working to end violence toward farmed animals in India. With the demand for meat and dairy rising in the country, we’ve been working to educate the masses on more compassionate food choices.

Starting with an international expansion tour, the India team has now grown to 7 staff and a country-wide volunteer network. From outreach and education programs in colleges to institutional campaigns, read on to know more about how we’re helping animals in India.

Inspiring thousands of students to go vegan

Vegan Outreach’s dedicated staff and volunteers conduct in-person and online outreach programs at over 2,188 colleges and high school campuses each year, as well as at festivals, fairs, and conventions in 28 states.

Our Adopt A College program involves interactive classroom presentations, showing virtual reality videos, and tabling with our persuasive booklets to raise awareness about the suffering of animals raised for food. We focus on reaching the people who are motivated enough to make changes now—of which there are always many in our target audience of college students.

Support for making changes

We conduct outreach with the aim of signing people up for our 10 Weeks to Vegan guided challenge. Everyone who signs up receives weekly emails or WhatsApp messages with easy recipes, product recommendations, nutrition information, and lots of motivation. The content is tailored for an Indian audience and available in both English and Hindi.

We also offer a free mentorship program for those who need one-on-one support in making the transition.

Institutional dairy and meat reduction campaigns

In addition to in-person outreach, Vegan Outreach also runs the Green Tuesday Initiative, a campaign to help companies, universities, schools, and hostels reduce their environmental footprint by making small changes in the food they serve.

So far, we’ve helped 38 educational institutions and corporate offices in India implement more sustainable food policies and reduce large quantities of animal products from their menus. Some of our recent victories include our latest success with Pondicherry University to reduce their meat consumption by 20%.

Read more about our latest campaign successes here.

Our impact in numbers

By steadily increasing the number of vegans we’re laying the groundwork to more quickly reach a tipping point. Here’s our success in numbers:

  • 135,251 students signed up for our 10 Weeks to Vegan guided challenge.
  • 2,188 colleges and high schools visited in 24 states.
  • 139,565 students attended classroom presentations.
  • 26,333 people watched virtual reality videos.
  • 1,418,984 people reached with informative vegan leaflets.
  • 38 universities, corporate offices, and hostels joined the Green Tuesday Initiative.

Excited to join the movement? Here’s how.

Our work is possible because of generous supporters. Make a donation today to help animals in India!

We also need dedicated volunteers to help us reach more students and community members to spare more animals from suffering. With just a few hours of your time, you can change several dozen students’ lives forever. Sign up via our Volunteer Form.

Our Best Q1 so Far, and Here’s Why!

I’m excited to update you about the first quarter of 2023. We did webinars with 200 colleges, reduced 220,462 pounds of meat and dairy through Green Tuesday successes, organized workshops for our GT partners, and more!

We can inspire more vegans and end animal agriculture with your support. Become our monthly sustainer today!
Donate Today

200 Colleges Joined the Food Planet Health Webinar Sessions!


In the last quarter, our outreach team organized three outreach tours in three different states of India and educated students about speciesism.

  • 200 colleges participated in the webinars.
  • 6000+ students joined the 10 Weeks to Vegan program.

    Learn more

    Our Green Tuesday Initiative Successes

    Hyderabad EV week:

    We partnered with Hyderabad EV Week, a kickoff week before the Hyderabad Grand E Prix. Plant-based food was served at their marquee events, such as Rall-E Hyderabad, EV Summit, and the Mobility startup challenge.

    Q1 Pondicherry tour is a success:

    Pondicherry University(PU), one of India’s most prominent universities, will reduce 125,002 pounds of chicken and 104,168 pounds of dairy consumption annually.

    PCRM collaboration with Green Tuesday Initiative:
    Hundreds of employees from Tech Mahindra and Incture Technologies joined the workshop organized by Green Tuesday and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine(PCRM).

    Our Latest Successes

    Building an Online Community for New Vegans!

    In the last quarter, our outreach team organized three outreach tours in three different states of India and educated students about speciesism.

  • The 10 Weeks to Vegan website helped more than 11,000 people with resources and information about veganism.
  • Our online communities on Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram are helping more than 5,000 people in their transition.

    We could do all these only because of you. Thank you for supporting our important work. Share our newsletter within your network and inspire your friends to help animals!

    Share it over email



    With gratitude,

    Richa Mehta,
    Director of Programs, India

    • Pasta With White Sauce

    By Frederico Maciel de Mello

    I’m not a super cook so I like easy recipes. Here is one of my favorites.

    Ingredients:

    • 4 tablespoons of vegan butter or olive oil (with vegan butter it is much tastier)
    • 4 tablespoons of wheat flour
    • 500 ml of cashew nut milk (you can use unsweetened milk, but cashew nut milk is great because it has a neutral flavor)
    • Salt, black pepper and nutmeg to taste.

    Directions:

    •  In a heated pan put the butter and let it melt. Add the flour and stir for about 2 minutes with the help of a spoon or spatula
    • Add the milk all at once and, with the help of a wire whisk, mix well until it boils
    • Put the fire down and let it cook for about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time
    • Finally, season generously with nutmeg, salt and black pepper
    • Yields approximately 400 grams of sauce
    • Add to your favorite pasta and enjoy!

    Our goals for 2023!

    We did incredible things in 2022 with the support of our generous donors and hardworking staff. We have even bigger goals for 2023, and we need you more than ever!

    Our goals for 2023

    Here’s the difference your contribution can make in 2023:

  • Inspire 50,000 new students to sign up for the 10 Weeks to Vegan Program in India.
  • Reduce 992,080 pounds of animal products – 694,456 pounds of meat and 297,624 pounds of dairy products.
  • Expand the Green Tuesday Initiative to Vietnam.


    We couldn’t have done it without you!

    We exceeded both our outreach and Green Tuesday Initiative goals in 2022. Here’s what we achieved with your support.

    Vegan Outreach is possible because of YOU—together, we can stop animal suffering by helping people go vegan.

    Donate Today


    With gratitude,

    Richa Mehta,
    Director of Programs, India

    • Leafleting with Vegan Outreach—Australia and New Zealand

    By Sam Tucker, Australia and New Zealand Outreach Coordinator

    Sam Tucker

    Ever since I first learned about the suffering of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses, I’ve wanted to do more to help than just change my diet. Don’t get me wrong, simply eating vegan or vegetarian does make a huge difference—in fact, going vegetarian represents sparing about 35 mammals, birds, and fish every year. But if we can inspire just one other person to change their diet, we’ve already doubled our impact for animals!

    Through advocating for others to adopt a more compassionate diet, we can save thousands of more animals than we ever could have through changing our own dietary choices alone.

    I’ve been vegan for more than eight years, and since then I’ve been involved in many different forms of activism, including organizing and attending protests, hosting an animal rights radio show, creating YouTube videos, and running websites. But of all the forms of activism I’ve been involved in, I’ve found leafleting at universities with Vegan Outreach to be one of the most fun, easy, and effective ways to inspire people to adopt a compassionate diet.

    Almost every day that I leaflet, people tell me they want to go vegan or vegetarian after reading about the horrors of factory farming. A study conducted by Farm Sanctuary in 2013 found that about 1 in 50 students who receive a leaflet go vegetarian or pescatarian. You could spend just one hour leafleting, hand out 100 leaflets or many more and there could be many new vegetarians!

    Considering that the average meat-eating person will eat about 2,000 animals in their lifetime, that one hour of leafleting has the potential to spare thousands of animals.

    Sam Tucker

    As well as being an effective way to save animals, leafleting is also easy to do! Most people simply take a leaflet and say, “thank you” or don’t take a leaflet and say, “No, thank you.” The people who stop to talk are usually doing so to ask questions about going veg or to tell you that they’re already veg. Overall, I’ve found that the general reaction from the public is very positive.

    Virtually everybody is against animal cruelty. Most people simply don’t realize how much cruelty and suffering is inherent in the production of food made from animals or how easy it is to replace animal food products in your diet. When we educate people about this in a friendly, positive, and non-confrontational way, they’re very often receptive to our message.

    So, go ahead and give leafleting a shot!

    Visit this page for more information.

    7000+ students in 1 month | 1.1 million pounds of animals products reduced

    This year our focus has been strengthening foundations and building long-term relations with key stakeholders and organizations. It all paid off in getting closer to our goals and helping animals in India. Here’s how.

    Adopt A College Virtual Tour in Two States

    We collaborated with the Ministry of Youth Affairs, an entity of the Indian government, early last quarter to conduct nationwide webinars in association with the National Service Scheme (NSS).
    We leveraged this collaboration to organize two virtual tours with universities in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

    Highlights include:

  • 13 webinars with 106 colleges
  • Reached 7,000+ students
  • 6,631 students signed up for 10 Weeks to Vegan

    Our Journey with Tech Mahindra

    Our journey with Tech Mahindra, a tech giant in India, started in August 2021 with one campus in Hyderabad. We have continued to engage with their teams across India and expanded the Green Tuesday Initiative to 18 campuses in 7 locations so far.


    Highlights include:

  • 0.5 Mn kgs/1.1 Mn pounds of animal products prevented from being served. 18 campuses of Tech Mahindra joined Green Tuesday Initiative
  • Organized 2 awareness workshops for India and global facility teams

    Senior Campaigns Manager Part of Government Sustainability Committee

    Bhavya Vatrapu from our India team is now part of the Telangana government’s strategy team for sustainability initiatives. It’s a core working group set up by the IT department to promote sustainability initiatives in the state. Other members in the core group include sustainability team members from HSBC, Microsoft, HYSEA, CCI, and other government officials.
    This will open up opportunities for Bhavya to interact with industry leaders and key companies and introduce them to food sustainability.

    Thank you for believing in a better future for animals and enabling this important work.
    We can inspire more vegans and end animal agriculture with your support.

    Donate Today



    With gratitude,

    Richa Mehta,
    Director of Programs, India

    • What’s 529,109? • Bangalore Tour • A Big Thank You

    I’m excited to tell you that our Green Tuesday Initiative reduced 529,109 pounds/ 240,000 kgs of animal products so far in 2022 from getting served. Halfway through 2022, we’ve already reached 60% of our annual goal.

    Recent Campaign Successes

  • VDart Technologies, a tech and business consulting firm based out of Tiruchirappalli, has implemented the Green Tuesday initiative. On 4th May 2022, their sustainability and admin teams came together along with Sidd Ahmed–CEO and Oliver Sam–Vice President, for the virtual accreditation event.
    VDart pledged to reduce their weekly milk and egg consumption. This change will reduce 11,700 eggs and 3,510 liters of milk annually.

  • Tech Mahindra’s new campus joined the Green Tuesday Initiative. This quarter, on World Environment Day, June 5th, Bahadurpally campus started serving meat-free meals to all the employees on Tuesdays.

    This change will reduce 67,600 kgs/ 149,032 pounds of Chicken and 676,000 eggs annually. With this addition, 16 Tech Mahindra campuses are part of the Green Tuesday Initiative.

      Highlights of the Bangalore Tour

      After two years of not traveling due to the pandemic, we did a tour in Bangalore to visit companies and institutions. The tour was indeed very successful. Here are the highlights of the tour:

    • We renewed the Green Tuesday partnership with REVA University, one of the largest universities in India with 15,000+ students. They will now serve meat-free meals 5 days a week. This change will reduce 62,160 kgs/ 137,039 pounds of chicken annually.
    • Carl Zeiss, a Germany-based optoelectronics manufacturing company, joined Green Tuesday Initiative. They now serve meat-free meals on all days of the week to all their employees. This change will reduce 11,700 kgs/ 25,794 pounds of chicken annually.

      Along with visiting the partners, Bhavya and Sowndarya also got a chance to brainstorm, unwind, do team-building activities, and explore vegan food in Bangalore.

      “I joined Vegan Outreach during the pandemic and never got a chance to meet our partners in person. Bangalore Tour was an excellent opportunity to meet them, visit their cafeterias, understand their perspectives, and position the Green Tuesday Initiative.”

      -Sowndarya Ganesan, Campaigns Specialist

      A Big Thank You

      Thank you for making #TeamVeganMonth a success! With the help of supporters like you, we raised over $137,000 for animals. Each dollar up to our $125,000 goal was matched, which means we can continue to roll out programs to spread veganism to make the world a better place for animals. in India.



      With gratitude,

      Richa Mehta,
      Director of Programs, India

    • Miguel Marrón

    Miguel Marrón

    Continuing our activist profile series, today we’re going to learn more about Miguel Marrón. In fall 2017—his first semester as a traveling Outreach Coordinator—Miguel leafleted 47 schools and handed out 47,885 leaflets. He just kicked off his spring leafleting tour, and he’s already handed out 12,500 leaflets.

    Where are you from and where do you live now?

    I’m from Northern Utah, and I live on the road.

    What got you interested in animal rights and veganism?

    I went vegetarian shortly after a grade school field trip where the class was taken into the mountains and instructed to kill chickens with our hands and pocket knives. Five or six chickens were let loose from cages and chased by a pack of about 50 kids. I remember pushing one of my classmates to the ground so that one of the chickens would have a chance to escape. I soon realized that this sort of thing must be happening all the time in order for us to be eating chicken every night at home.

    When I was 17 years old, I saw Meet Your Meat at a Goldfinger concert. I researched what I saw and realized that going vegan would bring my actions into better alignment with my values and beliefs of not harming others.

    For about five years, I didn’t know any other vegans. Honestly, I think a big part of why I got into activism was to meet other vegans. What keeps me an activist is seeing the results of our efforts and knowing that we’re making a difference. I often get exhilarated when I notice how fast and effective it is to get the animal rights message out to the masses with things like leafleting and pay-per-view.

    How did you get involved with Vegan Outreach and leafleting?

    I got involved with Vegan Outreach around 2010. I started Animal Unanimity, an animal rights student organization at Weber State University. I brought back VO literature from the Animal Rights National Conference in DC. After I distributed all the literature I had, I started ordering literature and leafleting regularly in Ogden, UT.

    What got me interested in VO specifically is how straightforward and fact-based the booklets are. I’ve found leafleting to be very exhilarating. It’s a really amazing way to bring this message to many people very quickly.

    Do you have a favorite leafleting moment to share?

    It’s too hard to choose just one. I’m overwhelmed at how generous the volunteers and hosts have been to me. I’ve been welcomed into the homes of total strangers and met so many amazing people!

    What do you do for fun when you’re not leafleting?

    In some ways, my life hasn’t changed much since I’ve been on the road leafleting. I still enjoy regular yoga and jogging. I also enjoy reading, writing in my journal, and playing Nintendo. Every chance I have, I go into nature and try to identify the plants and mushrooms that I see.

    Do you have anything else you’d like to add about leafleting?

    It’s really cool once an entire campus community has been saturated with VO leaflets. I notice that the topic is on everyone’s minds. I enjoy walking around and listening to students discuss these issues with each other.

    Can you tell us one of your favorite vegan products to share with our readers?

    I enjoy Treeline Cheese.

    Strengthening Foundations for Saving Animals

    In the the first quarter of 2022, Vegan Outreach India has strengthened our foundations for a greater reach. This includes strategizing for long-term collaborations with universities and colleges, working with government regulators for wider access to students, planning virtual tours to organize more Adopt A College Webinars, making solid connections, and setting up a pipeline of companies that will implement the Green Tuesday Initiative this year.
    Here are some of the highlights from the past quarter.

    New Green Tuesday Partnerships

  • Kaa’s Kitchen is based in Hyderabad and delivers 15,000 meals every month. We collaborated with them to add vegan options and veganized 90% of their meals.
  • Tech Mahindra, Pune joined the Green Tuesday Initiative. Last year, 14 campuses of Tech Mahindra implemented Green Tuesday Initiative in their cafeterias. This change will reduce 15,860 kgs/ 34,965 pounds of meat and 7,930 eggs annually in addition to 249,600 kgs/ 550,274 pounds of meat and 7,800 eggs of reduction from last year.

      Mission Compassion Virtual Tour with Mangalore University Colleges

      Mission Compassion has always been our most successful flagship program to organize Adopt A College Webinars. Our first virtual tour this year was with Mangalore University, and here are some highlights:

    • Organized 15 Webinars for students from 93 colleges
    • Reached out to 9,000+ students and inspired them to choose a compassionate lifestyle
    • 7,956 students joined the 10 Weeks to Vegan program who are now considering going vegan

        10 Weeks Subscriber’s Testimony

        Ramya joined the 10 Weeks to Vegan program and went vegan. She didn’t stop there. She went a step ahead and became a volunteer at Vegan Outreach. Here she shares her experience:

        Thank you for believing in a better future for animals and enabling our work. Together we will inspire more new vegans and help animals with your support.
        Please donate today to support our work in India.



        With gratitude,

        Richa Mehta,
        Director of Programs, India