Note from the Coordinators

We give a happy welcome to our new editor Samantha Gendler and a sad goodbye to our now former editor Keryl Cryer who left after a decade of service. Thank you to both Keryl and Samantha for making the transition as smooth as possible. Though the change included the usual learning curve, this was less overwhelming than 10 years ago when our former editor left and Debra was operating with no sleep keeping the Vegetarian Journal on time while tending to a young child and figuring out what to do with all the unknowns after 9/11 and the economic downturn. At that time, for a few years we noticed that many vegetarian and animal rights groups/volunteers became low key. Today, we're happy to observe that veggie festivals and outreach again are booming all over the country.

Kudos to VRG's Volunteer Coordinator Mary Herbranson, who realized during a single week she had our high school intern Soren packing for outreach booths at 12 events. Thank you to all our interns, volunteers, and donors around the country who allow us to be at venues from professional conferences and vegetarian festivals to street fairs and presentations in prisons and schools. And it was cool that after an intern roped her mother into helping at one of our community outreach booths, that mom, who had so much fun, decided to organize a two-day vegetarian booth at a county fair in a relatively conservative area of the state. If you would like to help with outreach anywhere in the country, please pop Mary a note at [email protected] or call (410) 366-8343. For those of you living in Maryland, volunteering in the office to help send out all these materials can make a huge difference. And of course financial contributions and bequests are greatly appreciated so we can keep up with all the outreach opportunities.

VRG had an outreach booth at Natural Products Expo. It was satisfying answering questions from exporters of vegan goods from Colombia, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere. We were glad we could point a New York City school foodservice looking for sources of vegan cheese without nuts or coconut in the right direction. To help us encourage and answer many of the questions we receive from companies who want to market vegan products, we've conducted numerous polls over the years.

At the Natural Products Expo East, there was a host of new vegan products being displayed from kale chips and coconut ice cream to vegan scallops, vegan chocolate crunch bars and hearty vegan lentil dishes. To learn about some of these new items, look for reviews on our blog at www.vrg.org.