Vegan Education
Animal Rights Education and Vegan Outreach Programs
We have been doing education programs for schoolchildren at the shelter since 2015 and have also had several local welfare groups come for training over the years.
These programs have focused on teaching basics in animal rights and animal care and why caring for animals means acknowledging the suffering of all species rather than just pets. Children must be taught that a water buffalo, tuna, monkey, pig, squid, cat, or dog all have the same desires for living a life free from pain and suffering.
At Vietnam Animal Aid, we rescue all animal species from the same conditions of suffering and the eventual fate of early and unnecessary death. We do not focus solely on education about ending the dog and cat meat trades, but we focus on education about ending all of the meat trades.
Teaching Vietnamese children that some of the species that are killed in their country, namely cats, dogs, and wild animals, should not be killed for food simply because they are not killed for food in highly-developed countries like the US and Europe, is illogical and unethical.
If we focus education programs only on companion animals, the ethical message gets confusing as kids are taught to love some animal species, but participate in the industrialized torture and unnecessary killing of others. This is called Speciesism.
If we teach children that all animals are morally significant and we acknowledge that humans have no right to use them for our pleasure, amusement, or convenience, we will finally make some headway in combating speciesism in society and we can finally begin to protect animal rights for all species equally.
We plan to restart our educational and outreach programs as soon as we have enough funding.
We are also working on hosting vegan festivals in our region as they have been popular and well-attended in the past few years in Vietnam’s northern and southern major cities.
Our ethos and education are based in non-speciesism, and that Loving Animals Means Living Vegan.