Cool bake sale fliers from Spokane, Washington and Northampton, Massachusetts

Two vegan bake sales today: Exeter, UK and Tempe, AZ!

Compassion for Animals, which is organizing (for lack of a better term) the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale (WVBS), has created a simple bifold flier, aimed at non-vegans, and especially non-vegetarians, about reasons to go vegan. It only scratches the surface of the subject, and attempts to introduce vegetarianism and veganism—and explain the diference between the two—in a friendly, conversational style. It focuses on ethical issues, though it does briefly mention environmental and health aspects of an animal-free diet.

We wanted to ask each customer at our bake sales if we could give them some information about what our group does, and we decided we needed a flier with a vegan message that was small and unobtrusive, and emphasized the cruelty and suffering in the dairy and egg industries, since dairy and eggs are the two most common non-vegan ingredients in baked goods. That's how we ended up writing the flier. We'll probably tweak it over time, but we liked this first cut enough to pass it out at our bake sale last Saturday.

Except for the logo at the beginning of the flier and the footer at the end, the flier says nothing about Compassion for Animals. We kept it very non-group-specific and put it online as a Word document, so that others could use it, and replace the header and footer with their own materials if desired. We only ask that if you change any other text, please remove the Compassion for Animals logo and text from the document.

The flier isn't tied to the WVBS, or to bake sales, although it does make a passing reference to vegan desserts. (We'll have a WVBS handout down the road.)

To use the flier, print page one onto a piece of paper, then print page two on the other side of that paper, then fold the paper in half. You may need to tweak margins and possibly one or two page breaks. The flier may not be perfect, but perhaps it will be useful. You can download it here.

Amazing vegan food and outreach and fundraising have been going on all over this weekend! Stay tuned for more news on that. In the meantime, however, there are activities every day this week, starting tomorrow (Monday).

Lots of stuff sold; lots of outreach, fun, and deliciousness! Reports and pictures later...

More creative bake sale posters and fliers:

Although most of the news items on this page—like the bake sales themselves—are fun and upbeat, there is a serious side to all this. Vegan bake sales help show the world that we don't need to exploit animals to have a hugely satisfying, delicious variety of baked goods and desserts. We don't need to suffocate or grind up newborn chicks, as is done at hen hatcheries throughout the egg industry. We don't need to steal baby calves from their mothers and deprive them of their mothers' milk—the standard practice on dairy farms. (Watch this video for more on dairy.)

There are abundant cruelty-free options to provide moisture, binding, taste, and texture in baked goods. Let's strive for a world where we enjoy favorites like chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins, as well as creative dishes like cherry-chocolate danishes and orange-cranberry scones, but with compassion for all, avoiding harm and the infliction of suffering to animals as much as possible. On an individual basis, it is very easy to make that choice today! And in doing so, we—all of us—can, in effect, have our cake and eat it too.