Mission & Vision of Vegans of Steemit, and who are our Vegan Witnesses?

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Dear all,

It’s been just a little over 2 weeks now that I’ve created the Vegans of Steemit discord channel, and we’re already 87 members big at the time of writing!

To be honest, I did not expect so many people to join that quickly, and I certainly didn’t think that there was such a huge vegan and vegetarian community on Steemit. It’s truly heartwarming to find so many like minded people. We can chat about anything really, but we all know that we have one thing in common, which that we don’t want animals to suffer, and we want to preserve our health and the environment.

Now, I know I just said “like minded”, but that is not always true.

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I’ve already witnessed our first little “désaccord” or disagreement about what the vegan lifestyle is about in our chat. Nothing serious, but when that many people come together, chances are not everyone agrees with everybody on each topic. On a positive note, it opens room for dialogue.

This little incident made me realize that it was time to state my vision and mission for this invaluable discord group, as I envision it.

Vision of Vegans of Steemit

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My first goal was to get lots of vegans and also vegetarians together to exchange ideas, recipes, and to support each other on Steemit. I do, however, have ulterior motives.

The vision of this group, is to create a more compassionate and sustainable society free of animal cruelty.

This is my utopian dream. A world in which no poor souls will be killed for food, in a sustainable society which will shift towards plant-based diets.

Nobody can change the world alone and overnight. That’s why we need each other to bring our resources, projects and knowledge together, to work towards that same goal.

Mission of Vegans of Steemit

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The mission is the “how” of the vision. My idea, when creating vegans of Steemit, was to bring vegans, vegetarians and omnis who are considering/struggling to become vegan together, with the goal to help each other.

I know that the name “Vegans of Steemit” itself suggests that it should be a purely vegan group, but how much could we achieve if we close ourselves off from the rest of the world? How would we spread our knowledge, and help others adopt our lifestyle?

I imagine a community in which experienced vegans can help omnis and newly-turned-vegans get their act together, overcome their bad habits, and to exchange plant-based recipes to make their transition smooth. Nobody was born a perfect vegan, and everyone gets there differently. Some take longer and go through stages, such as slowly giving up different kinds of meat, then fish and eventually dairy etc.Others are able to do it overnight. Some may consider leaving animal products behind, but still need a little push and support. A general chat where people can ask questions and share information is the perfect breeding ground to grow the vegan community.

On a personal level, I believe that it is my primary role to open the minds and eyes of meat eaters around me. I personally post more about animal rights. Through my articles, I try to wake the interest of meat eaters, without alienating them or insulting them. I believe that the key to convince someone to join your way of thinking is to show them the positive sides of doing so, not by pointing out their bad behavior.

Like @teamsteem mentioned not so long ago, “everyone is a vegan at heart, they just don’t know it yet”.

It was true for me, and I believe it to be true for a lot of people. Vegans of Steemit has therefore a leadership role, and our most important task is to help people see the truth of the food industry in order to fight it, with Steemit as our battle field.

Vegan witnesses on Steemit

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This brings me to my last point, which is to choose our allies well. As soon as the channel was created, fellow vegan and Steemit witness @teamsteem joined us and shared his optimism about the power of a vegan group on Steemit. He also informed me that there is more than one vegan witness on the platform, who would be happy to support our community.

Since every Steemit user can vote for up to 30 witnesses, I believe that it can be of enormous help to our vegan community to have witnesses who share our values and principles, and who have good intentions for the platform.

For those who are not familiar with what each witness does and who they are, here’s a brief introduction of the vegan witnesses on Steemit, in their own words:

@teamsteem (Guillaume Cardinal)

• 34 years old
• Vegan for 3 years +
• Vegetarian for 5 years prior
• Active daily on Steem since May 2016
• Witness since September 2016
• The best place to know what I do as a witness is here

I've experience suffering and I've experienced its opposite. The last thing I want is to inflict suffering or deprive someone of his/her capacity to enjoy life.

Favorite quotes:

"Most people share the moral intuition that the infliction of suffering and death on a sentient being require some sort of justification and pleasure isn't a good justification but that's the only justification we have for eating them, wearing them and using them in most context." - Gary Francione

"The most ethical diet just so happens to be the most environmentally sound diet and just so happens to be the healthiest." – Dr. Michael Greger

@dragosroua

• kept my witness node running smoothly, with no missed blocks
• Updated my price feed twice, first time for 200% and second time for 300%, following a broader attempt of witnesses to normalize the SBD price, which, at the moment of writing this, is trading at almost $8
• Kept my SBD APR at 1%
• Kept the account registration fee at $1 (I use a script called steem witness toolbox, available for free on Github, for publishing the feed price and adjusting a few blockchain props)
• Kept the block size at 65,536
• Updated steem.supply with a minor release, mostly related to the way rewards are displayed, trying to adapt to the new SBD highs.

@ura-soul:

11 Year Vegan, creator of http://steemocean.com/

I aim to nurture life and make decisions that result in us feeling good and that are both compassionate and wise. I have 35 years experience of computing, a degree in Applied Computing and over 15 years of professional experience in the field. I have used social networks with the intent of healing, balancing, learning and evolving for 10 years - starting at tribe.net! I have been involved in designing a social network startup and also run my own social network at ureka.org. I now also run steemocean.com, which is a new platform to support Steemians as they learn about each other and it is intended to provide data that helps us make better decisions when voting and acting on the blockchain. Steem ocean has already been used to identify vote scams and those who could be said to be abusing the system.

As an artist, musician, designer and general guide towards balance, I am connected with a variety of high profile people both indirectly and directly who I am gradually on-boarding to Steem. I am also in the process of working to produce high quality educational videos that explain the mechanics of Steem/Steemit to improve the general understanding of what Steem is. Additionally, I have designs in mind for an entirely new UI for Steem that is intended to increase levels of balance in the ecosystem and I may also integrate a Smart Media Token into my existing platform at Ureka when the time is right. I have new ideas and requests from others almost every day regarding Steem, so everything might change quickly.. So stay tuned!

@krnel

I am on the Steem blockchain in order to share information about various topics to help change the world for the better. Specifically, I focus on moral truth and psychology/consciousness to understand ourselves better and how we can live better through moral principles. I am also here because I am rewarded for the content I put out.

As a Witness, what I offer is not technical improvements or apps for the blockchain, but informative quality knowledge. I want people to learn about meaningful information that can affect the quality of their lives, to change the current condition of the world through empowering information.

I want to change things in the world, and Steem is the platform through which I wanted to try to do that by spreading quality information. Quality information will raise the quality of our consciousness, our thinking, and as a result the overall quality of the world as well. Moral knowledge is the most important to do this.

My goal is to help change the world for the better. I want to use Steemit to do it. I appreciate all the support for the specific work I put out in that effort, and will also appreciate your support as a witness for the Steem blockchain. I want to take the new model of the blockchain changing the world, and keep going into changing ourselves so that we can change the world for the better.”

• SteemKURE (Kindred United To Reward Excellence) Curation Network
  consulting community members to help with their projects, such as @steempowertwins, @officialfuzzy, @steemnews.online and @steemtrail
• Trying to educate the community on issues going on in Steemit as well as regular society (check my blog page for raising awareness on self-knowledge)
• And now I'm running a witness node to provide reliable block production as a dependable and trustworthy individual.

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I will leave you guys with this information for now, and I hope that most members of our discord channel will agree with this vision and mission. Of course I’m always happy about any type of feedback you may have and look forward to your comments below!