For the past several months, OTCA's Directors have been on the phone and corresponding via email with participants in our 2016 Baltimore Vegan Living Program. There's less than a week left til we launch the program on Saturday March 26th at Wisdom Book Center, and we are beyond excited to connect all the great folks we've been talking with! Our Vegan Living Program (VLP) has a mentorship component wherein people who have lived vegan for a year or longer volunteer to be Vegan Coaches for aspiring vegans. Vegan Pledges pledge to live vegan for the duration of the program (and hopefully a lifetime) with the support of their Vegan Coach, the education they receive at the sessions, and the VLP community. But you don't have to be a Vegan Pledge or Coach to join us...All the VLP sessions held in Baltimore are free to attend, and open to all! The VLP is entirely volunteer-run, and we've been offering it entirely free of charge since 2011 in Baltimore. We are able to do this thanks to the help of kind donors who support our mission, most notably the organization A Well-Fed World (www.awfw.org). A Well-Fed World promotes plant-based solutions to hunger. Towards this end AWFW makes projects all over the world possible, directly changing and saving lives.
Back to those phone calls and emails...Every year, as we hit the phones to reach and confirm Vegan Pledges and Coaches, we stumble upon "matches made in heaven" in terms of Coach-Pledge pairings. Sometimes, folks' interests and reasons for coming to the program sync up so well, teaming them up is an obvious choice! We love it when this happens, and we also LOVE that ten individuals who have graduated as VLP Vegan Pledges in prior years will join us this year as Vegan Coaches! We spend about six months planning each Vegan Living Program, and in the course of the planning process we are the primary contact points for all participants. We're so pumped for everyone to connect with one another at Launch Day this Saturday, so you can all see for yourselves why we're thrilled to have everyone on board! See you at the Vegan Living Program!
