We are ending the month of March with one more salute to women for Women's History Month by highlighting two Black female activists we haven’t yet featured in our blog posts but we hope our readers take notice. These two super women were recently mentioned in VegNews’ article, “15 Vegan Women Activists of Color You Need to Know About.”
Brenda Sanders is the executive director of Afro-Vegan Society, which is a nonprofit that provides resources to people in marginalized communities to assist them in transitioning to veganism. According to the Afro-Vegan Society’s website, it says since people in marginalized communities are often overlooked by those doing vegan advocacy, people in these communities have little or no access to information that would help them to make healthier and more sustainable choices. Afro-Vegan Society exists to make sure this information is available and accessible to everyone!
The Afro-Vegan Society website has listings of Black-owned vegan food-related businesses around the U.S and a variety of recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We can’t wait to make the Smoky Chipotle Pumpkin Hummus! Another jem on the website is the free, downloadable African-American Vegan Starter Guide.
Another super woman we recently learned about is Seble Nebiyeloul who was born in Ethiopia, and left for the United States as a kid. She later co-founded the International Fund for Africa (IFA), a nonprofit with a mission to improve the well-being of children in Ethiopia and beyond.
IFA supports and advocates a nutritional plant-based diet for Africa and globally in the fight against malnutrition. Its website says it has been working with vegetarian/vegan societies in Ghana and Togo and has been instrumental in the establishment of the first Ethiopian Vegan Association in 2010, and that same year, it helped to organize the first ever Vegan Food Partners Conference.
As we learn more about different vegan social activists, we hope to feature them in the future. Social activism goes beyond discriminationa and systemic racism, it’s also about opening our minds to myths we were taught about food, nutrition and animals.
The godmother of activism, the great Angela Davis, who didn’t talk much about being a vegan, said her perspective on food has been revolutionary, "The food we eat masks so much cruelty. The fact that we can sit down and eat a piece of chicken without thinking about the horrendous conditions under which chickens are industrially bred in this country is a sign of the dangers of capitalism, how capitalism has colonized our minds.”
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