If the images of animals suffering in puppy mills, factory farms, zoos, laboratories, and fur farms leave you feeling sad and helpless, it’s important for you to know the power YOU can have, as an individual, to help them.
Animal Justice Academy (AJA) will teach you how to become an informed, vibrant, and effective champion for animals through political engagement, effective communication, media, diet, public outreach, resilience-building, and your own unique communities and social circles.
Starting exactly where you are, you’ll learn tonnes of different ways to advocate for animals—from meeting with your political representative, to getting vegan food offerings at local restaurants and grocery stores, to creating captivating social media content, to learning how to have effective conversations about animal issues with your family and friends.
Whether you’re completely new to animal advocacy or a veteran activist, vegan or omnivore, young or not so young ;)… AJA will give you new tools, ideas, community, and momentum for making vital change for animals.
Over 80 teachers/speakers. Animal protection luminaries from the worlds of media, politics, grassroots organizing, business, racial justice, nutrition, law, art, food policy, and health and wellness. Including…
Dr. Melanie Joy • Camille Labchuk • John Lewis (AKA Badass Vegan) • Jo-Anne McArthur • Elizabeth May • Jane Velez-Mitchell • Gwenna Hunter • Anita Krajnc • Nathaniel Erskine-Smith • Jake Conroy (AKA The Cranky Vegan) • Dr. Charu Chandrasekera • Jack Norris • Amy Soranno • Nahanni Fontaine • Isaias Hernandez (AKA Queer Brown Vegan) • Dave Meslin • Amy Symington • Sailesh Rao • Lesli Bisgould • Jenny McQueen • Peter Sankoff • Dr. Tushar Mehta • Kimberly Carroll • Lesley Fox • Tashi Nyima • Rob Laidlaw • Michelle Rojas-Soto • Jessica Scott-Reid • Geoff Regier • Pamela Fergusson • Stephanie Redcross • Liz White • Gabriel Wildgen • Angela Lee • Calvin Neufeld • Andy Meddick • Priya Sawhney • Sophie Gaillard • Dr. Aysha Akhtar • Gaia’s Eye • Anne-Marie Campbell • Mikko Järvenpää • Sonia Faruqi • Anna Pippus • James Yurichuk • Claire Smith • Tayler Zavitz • Shawna Gray • Dr. Matthew Nagra • and so many MORE brilliant beings
In this first week, you’ll get a solid foundation in animal issues. We’ll discuss the concept of animal rights and animal protections, the major areas of animal suffering, the damage of animal exploitation, our biggest challenges in animal protection, and different types of animal advocacy organizations in Canada and beyond.
We'll be exploring how to be effective and inclusive animal advocates at work, at school, in our neighbourhoods, institutions, and social communities. You’ll learn about effectively engaging those in your close circles, intersectionality, getting more vegan products on menus and shelves, building diversity in the animal movement, and influencing businesses and institutions to be more animal-friendly.
Let’s get political! We'll explore simple ways to get involved politically on the federal, provincial, and municipal levels to help promote animal-friendly and plant-based political initiatives and legislation.
The animal exploitation and abuse that happens in North America is mostly behind closed doors and hidden from by the majority of society. We explore a variety of ways to expose animal suffering to the public and keep government and corporations accountable. We’ll cover abuse reporting, planning demonstrations and actions, nonviolent strategy, utilizing complaint systems, knowing your rights, pressure campaigns, dealing with conflict, and the invasion of ag gag laws.
This week is about how to expand your sphere of influence in order to amplify animal issues and messages. We'll explore how to produce engaging social media content, getting letters to the editor and other print pieces published in mainstream media, starting a vegan business, tips on how to be interviewed, using your creativity to advocate for animals, how to increase your Google search rankings, the power of visual mediums in animal advocacy, and even vegan investing.
We’ll explore how you can be the most effective and enduring advocate for animals possible. We’ll look at how to have an optimal activist mindset and cultivate emotional and physical wellness -- from practicing healthy boundaries to processing the pain of doing this work to tips to optimal vegan eating to bringing mindfulness to activism.
Right now, this program is self-paced, so you decide how much time you want to put into this each week. Currently in the AJA Facebook group, we're taking a month to go through each week of curriculum.
If you'd like to join the community live, the monthly panels are 90 minutes, and the biweekly Lunchtime Live sessions are 1 hour. We also recommend putting a little time aside to take part in the weekly AJA Actions.
How much you decide to participate is up to you…just keep in mind that this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to grow yourself into a truly powerful force for animals.
Do I need to be Canadian to do Animal Justice Academy?We are based in Canada, but we welcome international folks to the program! There will be quite a few references to situations in Canada, but the lessons and tools are pretty universal.
Click ENROLL NOW below to fill out the registration form. Upon submission, you'll get confirmation of your registration. You'll also get an email explaining next steps.
We'll see you inside the academy!
ENROLL NOWWe made Animal Justice Academy free so it can be available for everyone, but if you’d like to support our efforts to help advocates make a larger impact in the lives of animals, please consider donating to Animal Justice Academy.
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