Create a Vegan World
Hannah Greene’s VRG Intern Experience
My VRG internship was absolutely life-changing! I couldn’t stop smiling after my first day of work! I have learned so much about the vegan movement, and also about the nonprofit world as a whole. I learned about the publishing industry, the analysis needed to understand statistics truthfully, the politics of agriculture, and a lot of other important life lessons.
Highlights of my internship were... everything! This was the first job I have looked forward to every single day. I spent each day feeling excited about articles I was writing, intrigued by all I learned, and even more inspired to make change in the world. I loved learning about the environment and the importance of veganism, and sharing this knowledge with others in creative ways. I gained experience writing, sharing vegan meals, and planning presentations and outreach booths, which will inspire me for years to come.
Our outreach work reached someone I hadn’t expected — me! When I first started at VRG, I was vegetarian, but now that I have learned more about veganism, I am committed to the vegan lifestyle.
Another intern and I gave a presentation at Tuttie’s Place, a group home for foster children in Baltimore City, with a lesson plan designed to inspire and empower the students to think about the impact of what they eat. We played a game using a six-foot-diameter My Vegan Plate made to teach them about healthy eating.
Writing an article on vegan Malaysian recipes combined a lot of things I’m passionate about — veganism, cooking, travel writing, and Malaysia. This was a valuable opportunity to spread cultural awareness and exciting new flavors. I also enjoyed writing about vegan snack options for field hockey players and other athletes, and about starting a vegetarian group in high school. I hope that these articles will inspire other teens to embrace veganism fully and to be activists for the issues they care about.
This internship was particularly fulfilling because of all the community service. One of the most challenging but rewarding opportunities has been helping to create a vegan meal plan that fulfills nutrition requirements and meets the financial limits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.
We helped design a vegan meal plan, alter it within a nutrition tracking database, and make a shopping list for a family of four. After that, we visited a supermarket in a Baltimore neighborhood to check prices for ingredients. Finding that even the staples added up to be too expensive, we continued to modify recipes to cost less and still fulfill daily nutrition requirements. It is difficult to find any SNAP meal plans at all, and so I hope the vegan one will be impactful.
Making six vegan casseroles for local soup kitchen Our Daily Bread was another way to give back to the community. Cooking on a large scale was a new adventure, and the seven hours spent in the kitchen was a fun bonding opportunity with the other intern!
