Written by Julia Mathew

I represented The Vegetarian Resource Group at the Harford County Earth Day Festival in Aberdeen, Maryland along with two other VRG volunteers. The festival was originally scheduled on Saturday, April 22, but was moved to Sunday because of the rain. The event was a great experience!

I talked to many people who were very interested in becoming vegetarian or vegan. The event was very child-friendly, making our I Love Animals and Broccoli coloring books a huge hit. A young girl who appeared to be about 10 years old showed genuine curiosity about going vegan. She expressed her concerns about not eating meat and wanted to learn more about vegetarianism and veganism. I gave her a journal for some recipes, our Vegetarianism in a Nutshell packet, and answered her personal questions.

About 150 people came across our booth, most of which received a copy of Vegetarian Journal. Many people were excited to use our Greater Baltimore Veggie Restaurant Guide, stating that it would be very useful. An enthusiastic, young vegan man stopped by our booth and took some of our materials to pass out to members in his community. He went vegan about two months ago and discussed how life changing the experience has been for him. Another older couple came across our booth and thanked us for the work we were doing. They gave us a donation while we told them more about our Journal. One mother told us that she had recently made her family go vegan after watching the documentary “Forks Over Knives” together. She took some of our nutritional resources and skimmed through a couple of our books. One friendly man stopped by and we discussed a little about the VRG and he ended up signing up for our email newsletter.

We also networked with DineKind Harford, a local vegan group who was also at the event. They were extremely kind and showed us some of the vegan children’s books that they were selling. The group also had a copy of our My Vegan Plate handout on one of their information boards. We discussed how nice it was to have a fellow vegan group at the event also promoting this lifestyle.

Overall, it was really wonderful to interact with the local community in Aberdeen. The weather was beautiful and we met a lot of optimistic people who were genuinely curious about adopting a vegan lifestyle, or at the very least, reducing their consuming of animal products. I think we exchanged a lot of influential information and conversation with the people who stopped by our booth. I’m already looking forward to the next event where I’ll represent the VRG!