Callie went vegan at age 12 after watching a documentary. During high school, she led several climate strikes, where she spoke, detailing the ways that going vegetarian or vegan can mitigate climate change. Callie invited 2 local veggie food trucks to be at the rally, as well as set up a vegan information stand. She also gave a speech at an animal rights rally and did events for the Northwest Animal Rights Network.

As a local vegan food truck volunteer, Callie helped prepare food, experimented with new products, and marketed the food truck online. She volunteered at a community meals program as a floor manager recruiting new volunteers, managing the making and serving of food, and personally baking vegan desserts each month from freshman through senior year.

Callie said, “It was a huge challenge to get my school to implement vegan cafeteria meals, primarily because adding new foods was more expensive for them … and (I was) told the school would likely not add new options because not enough students were vegetarian… I asked for the help of my school’s environmental club in order to create a petition to show the school how important vegetarian meals are for the students. We got almost 260 student and staff signatures … which was enough to show the school that we needed vegetarian options.”

“The implementation of vegan options required getting up to the district level, because the superintendent and district staff have most of the control over all of the decisions made in the district, including cafeteria food. The vegan options added have included: a daily salad bar, daily rotation of a vegan soup or chili, vegan pasta options, and usually a grain/rice bowl including veggies and tofu. These have all worked well, and students seem to love them. I have tried them all and I like them a lot, especially the chili. These options are still being served in the high schools as of now, and the middle/elementary schools also continue to have vegan options—which are slightly more limited than the high schools—such as vegan pastas and sandwiches.”

Callie’s reference said she does all the above, in addition to working at a local supermarket and taking AP courses. Callie said her “plan is to get my bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science … My goal is to improve U.S. policy in order to improve our treatment of animals, including eliminating the modern factory-farming system.”

For information on other winners and applying for the next Vegetarian Resource Group college scholarship contest, see: https://www.vrg.org/student/scholar.htm

Deadline is February 20th of each year.

To support additional VRG scholarships and internships, donate at www.vrg.org/donate, call (410) 366-8343, or mail your contribution to The Vegetarian Resource Group, P.O. Box 1463, Baltimore, MD 21203.