At the wonderful NW Vegan Festival in Manchester we announced the Unsung Vegan Hero Awards. People there were keen to show their appreciation of those wonderful people who do such great veganising on the ground. Mary and Ronny who organised the excellent festival are lovely unsung heroes themselves - so please nominate them next year. Thanks so much to Niki O'Leary and Tim Barford for helping us give out the awards - another two great contenders to nominate for next year!

The 2008 Unsung Heroes

• 1st place - Caroline McAleese and Vegan Campaigns. She a major organiser for Vegan Campaigns London (a fantastic bunch of motivated people, all star veganisers themselves). She's a wonderful motivator and helps Vegan Campaigns to be such a cohesive positive veganising force to be reckoned with. She was strongly involved in organising the London Vegan Festival this year, as well as a host of free food fairs and other activities. "She's fantastic. And she's unsung. And she's a heroine." "The brilliance of Caroline cannot be doubted and the real strength of our group is in our ability to work collectively, using everyones ideas, input and talents."
• 2nd place - Paul Blanchard. In January 2007 Paul went vegan in the process of creating www.banfoiegras.org.uk, a campaign to ban the UK sale of foie gras, gaining huge international media attention. It included a motion to York Council, a 10 Downing Street petition (9,000 signatures) and a Parliamentary Early Day Motion (supported by 160 MPs). He secured support from Ben Bradshaw MP backing a call for a consumer boycott. With major animal welfare organisations behind the campaign, four councils and major stores banned its sale. Paul appeared on all major news programmes to raise awareness of the welfare costs of foie gras, with 45,000 people visiting his site to look at the photos and video clips.

Prizes

Let's celebrate these people we rarely hear about who are doing great stuff for veganism in their community. Redwood Foods, Veggie Snow and ActiVeg.org have teamed up to give an annual Unsung Vegan Heroes Prize. The two winners will receive Redwoods vouchers and first place will also receive veganising funds from Veggie Snow.

The Nominees

We've received some lovely ideas for people deserving to be recognised for their quiet but important contribution to veganism.

These are the people nominated by you, from which we will select the winners. I include a few quotes from those who nominated them.

• Ellen Howard from Bristol Vegans, "she’s choice and has done a very difficult thing in Bristol which is bring people together as a social group, she’s done really well and deserves a shout for her excellent attitude to it all. One look at the photo from the recent Bristol Vegans dinner and you can see we are a happy bunch of campers and that’s largely due to Ellen's work". "Bristol Vegans now has over 130 members on our mailing list, and we're less than two years old!"
• Pauline Dibley "who runs Southampton Animal Concern. Also a tireless worker for the animals. Nothings seems to deter her and she is regularly found doing stalls in inhospitable places such as Southampton City Centre. Credit is also due to SAC's members."
• Ian Nicoll Vegan Society Chair 2006-07 - "who spent days a week, to the detriment of his own business, supporting the Vegan Society staff and the new CEO when appointed, and helping to grow staff autonomy and individual accountability within the Society. Being independent, kind, fair and good humored to the end."
• Fiona Oakes - "Whenever I feel tired and blue I think of her and the 300+ animals she looks after single-handedly atTowerhill Stables. She is also a retained fire fighter and runs marathons to help raise funds for the sanctuary. Her partner Martin's earnings also mainly go to help run the sanctuary. She is up very early in the morning, works all through the day and somehow finds the time to run 80-100 miles a week!" "The main reason Fiona runs the marathon is actually to wear the Vegan Runners top to show that being Vegan is not prohibitive to performing well at endurance sport. Fiona won the Halstead Marathon last year making her the Essex County Champion which I think is about a bold a Vegan statement that one can make. (She also broke the course record by 11 minutes). She is top a top 10 UK female & considering she is not a pro and has a knee replacement, this is an outstanding achievement. "
• Olga Gee of Bury - "she (with pals) is out in all weathers doing stalls and tombola, raising £££ for numerous animal charities. We often get urgent requests for vets bills and food etc and she is always ready to help".
• Tim Vodden and Paul Williams of eatoutveganwales. They "have organised free vegan tastings around S.E.Wales for a couple of years, putting on fabulous feasts. Their next one is on 2nd February in Penarth then another on 9th February in Barry. Their website is www.eatoutveganwales.org and they produce a wonderful, free booklet with venues, times, number of vegan options etc and are always out and about testing new places and encouraging people to put on a meal for us. 24 of us recently had our festive dinner which we agreed was the best one ever." They "have opened so many eyes to the excitement of vegan food."
• Mahersh and Nishma of Shambhu's Kitchen who "jump hurdles to provide free, delicious, ethical and healthy vegan food aimed at the general public, rather than to make a profit. They quietly, but effectively show how easy it is to be vegan in a positive way. They have donated to a number of food fayres, despite often little reward in return for their own small business. "
• Nadine Francis of Sittingbourne who belongs to several active groups. "Nadine is very committed and does a great job promoting veganism and fighting for animal rights; she even persuaded a local restaurant to stop putting 'wild foods' on it's menu and I have enormous admiration for her."
• Sam McCreesh and inspiring young vegan who is very active and uses his technical skills to help others spread the word. One commented that he's "such a grand chap and sees to my web site very efficiently and with brilliant humour. He only works for ethical companies and also gives a % of his earning to charity (mainly 'his' horses) ..... I feel I know him well although we've never met"
• Gaynor Armitage for "her work creating handcrafted greetings cards, jewellery, and candles to raise campaigning funds for Viva! and the Vegan Society. A time-consuming, skilled and a very gentle way to promote the vegan message."
• Cathy Bryant and Sarah Richards of Manchester - for being lovely people organising very active campaigning and social groups, with lots of lovely ideas.
• Sue Daniels of Leicester - for an active group with a fast-growing website.
• Kevin White - the key person behind the very active Redditch Veggies and The Campaign for Eco-Veg*nism, involved in Midlands Vegan Campaigns and a big supporter of other local groups. Kevin is a key figure behind the second membership attempt to get Friends of the Earth to recognise the importance of what you eat on climate change, winning a motion at the FoE AGM.
• Morag Rose of Manchester who "is a leading light of The Basement Social Centre Colelctive and vegan cake maker extraordinaire. Morag is a great person and very self effacing - she is involved in lots of interesting things in the Manchester area; she is a member of MAPS (she will be on their stall at the North West Vegan Festival), MVS and MVVG. She also organises monthy psycho geography walks around Manchester."

And thanks so much to the lovely people who were kind enough to send in their nominations (some of whom were nominated themselves by others) including: Jen Williams, Ziggy Woodward, Ian McDonald, June Holder, Stephen Fenwick-Paul, Caroline McAleese, John Marshall, Lesley Dove, Sheila McCrossan, Shambu's Kitchen, Chrissy Leyland, Anita de la Riviere, Tim Barford, Alwynne Cartmell, Sarah Richards and Vanessa Payne.

We've also had several nominations for Stephen Fenwick-Paul - "We think that he fits this award perfectly, doing such a huge amount of work for veganism, but nearly all in a behind the scenes manner. In particular, we're thinking of his work on Activeg and the LVW network. By creating the infrastructure behind so many vegan/vegetarian websites he has given many other vegan activists the tools they need to spread the message and build communities." However, as he's my hubby I can't have him on the list, and even less me who some of you have been so kind to have nominated as well, because it would look a bit bad!!

If you think you know someone who should be on the list and isn't, well it's too late for this year, but we'll do it again next year so please remember to in good time then!

How the winners were chosen

Well, it was a seriously hard choice, that's for sure, as all these people are wonderful. If we didn't think they've won a vegan prize or award in the last few years, they fitted more neatly under the unsung hero label. Giving a positive vegan image amongst non-vegans is a key part of being a vegan hero, as well as being effective and good at working with others.

The decision is final for this year - nominate others next year!