About Us
VinE is committed to education which encourages children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, health and well-being, and academic attainment. We believe the inclusion of veganism in education will make a valuable contribution towards realising these objectives.
There is often misinformation about veganism and plant-based diets circulating in the public domain. Our organisation has the knowledge and expertise to provide age-appropriate, evidence-based information on veganism and plant-based diets to ensure teachers, parents and governing bodies can include vegan topics in the curricula with total confidence.
Franz Kafka
“Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.”
L.N. Tolstoy
“When a person freely and honestly seeks a moral path, the first thing he must turn from is meat. A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
Our Ambassadors / Contributors
Dr. Richard Twine
Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Co-Director of Centre for Human-Animal Studies, Edge Hill University, Lancashire
I applaud and endorse the aims of VinE which are exactly in line with the necessary transition to a sustainable society premised upon a deep reflection and engagement with our prevalent human/animal relations.
Dr. Shireen Kassam
Founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals, UK
MBBS, FRCPATH, PHD, DipIBLM
Teaching children to live kindly and compassionately is key to our future existence on this planet. We are facing a number of interrelated crises that ultimately relate back to how we live our lives. Understanding how our collective actions and behaviours can impact personal health, wider society and affect the lives of non-human animals with whom we share this earth is crucial. This is why the mission and work of VinE is so important and why I am delighted to be an ambassador and support their work.
Dr. Matthew Cole
Lecturer in Criminology, The Open University
Co-author, with Dr Kate Stewart, of Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood
The VinE initiative is emblematic of the best that education can offer, enhancing children’s skills in critical thinking at the same time as it encourages empathy and compassion. This is crucial for empowering future generations to lead us into a more peaceable, sustainable future, one in which we are better able to respect and care for ourselves, as well as all the inhabitants of our fragile planet. In a media context which is still dominated by messages that overtly or subtly distract children (and adults) from the harms that humans inflict on other animals and our shared environment, VinE is exactly what’s needed to cut through the obfuscation and resonate with the yearning for solutions that is evident among young people today.
The Vegan Society
The Vegan Society supports the great work that VinE are initiating. Education is a crucial part of building a vegan future for us all. Developing moral values in young people will encourage more understanding of the benefits of veganism, and create a more inclusive education experience for everyone.
Dr. Laila Kassam
Co-editor of ‘Rethinking Food and Agriculture: New Ways Forward’ and Co-Founder of Animal Think Tank
PHD
VinE is a timely and much-needed initiative which I wholeheartedly support. Young people face an impossible future and they are clearly hungry for solutions. We need to give them as much support and information as we possibly can. Including veganism in the school curriculum would be a massively impactful start, not just for them but for all of us.
Surveys show the high levels of climate anxiety among children globally. At the same time in the UK, a significant proportion of children and young people are taking action for the climate and the majority have adopted or want to adopt vegan and vegetarian diets.
Read more
Raising awareness amongst everyone, especially young people, of more compassionate, just, inclusive, responsible and sustainable ways of thinking, being and living such as veganism, that can address the roots of these crises and benefit the Earth and all her inhabitants, is an absolute imperative at this point.
Children and young people all over the world are facing the existential threats of ecological and climate breakdown with no guarantee they will inherit a habitable planet. In addition to these threats younger generations are facing a future of increasing: pandemics; antibiotic resistance; lifestyle diseases linked to unhealthy animal-based and processed diets; hunger; inequality; and the list goes on.
All of these crises are connected and all of these are driven by an unjust and unsustainable food system that exploits humans, other animals and the planet for the sake of profit. A violent and inefficient system that kills nearly 80 billion land animals and over 1 trillion aquatic animals every year for ‘food’, that drives deforestation and biodiversity loss and that uses 83% of farmland for animal agriculture while producing only 18% of calories.
To me, it is our domination of and disconnection from nature and our animal kin (and by extension our disconnection from each other and ourselves) that has got us into this mess. It is children and young people who will be leading the way out of it.
Vegan Organic Network
Educational charity
VON is delighted to support the VinE educational initiative. We are facing a point of no return: species extinction at an alarming rate, ocean deadzones, fishless oceans and a food system which has failed to change; treating sentient animals as “products”. Do we really want future generations to inherit this broken system? VinE is a catalyst for change. It is so needed and enables everyone to take decisive action to avert the crises we are all facing and to create positive change together.
Our Ambassadors / Contributors
Dr. Richard Twine
Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Co-Director of Centre for Human-Animal Studies, Edge Hill University, Lancashire
I applaud and endorse the aims of VinE which are exactly in line with the necessary transition to a sustainable society premised upon a deep reflection and engagement with our prevalent human/animal relations.
Dr. Shireen Kassam
Founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals, UK
MBBS, FRCPATH, PHD, DipIBLM
Teaching children to live kindly and compassionately is key to our future existence on this planet. We are facing a number of interrelated crises that ultimately relate back to how we live our lives. Understanding how our collective actions and behaviours can impact personal health, wider society and affect the lives of non-human animals with whom we share this earth is crucial. This is why the mission and work of VinE is so important and why I am delighted to be an ambassador and support their work.
Dr. Matthew Cole
Lecturer in Criminology, The Open University
Co-author, with Dr Kate Stewart, of Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood
The VinE initiative is emblematic of the best that education can offer, enhancing children’s skills in critical thinking at the same time as it encourages empathy and compassion. This is crucial for empowering future generations to lead us into a more peaceable, sustainable future, one in which we are better able to respect and care for ourselves, as well as all the inhabitants of our fragile planet. In a media context which is still dominated by messages that overtly or subtly distract children (and adults) from the harms that humans inflict on other animals and our shared environment, VinE is exactly what’s needed to cut through the obfuscation and resonate with the yearning for solutions that is evident among young people today.
Dr. Laila Kassam
Co-editor of ‘Rethinking Food and Agriculture: New Ways Forward’ and Co-Founder of Animal Think Tank
PHD
VinE is a timely and much-needed initiative which I wholeheartedly support. Young people face an impossible future and they are clearly hungry for solutions. We need to give them as much support and information as we possibly can. Including veganism in the school curriculum would be a massively impactful start, not just for them but for all of us.
Surveys show the high levels of climate anxiety among children globally. At the same time in the UK, a significant proportion of children and young people are taking action for the climate and the majority have adopted or want to adopt vegan and vegetarian diets.
Read more
Raising awareness amongst everyone, especially young people, of more compassionate, just, inclusive, responsible and sustainable ways of thinking, being and living such as veganism, that can address the roots of these crises and benefit the Earth and all her inhabitants, is an absolute imperative at this point.
Children and young people all over the world are facing the existential threats of ecological and climate breakdown with no guarantee they will inherit a habitable planet. In addition to these threats younger generations are facing a future of increasing: pandemics; antibiotic resistance; lifestyle diseases linked to unhealthy animal-based and processed diets; hunger; inequality; and the list goes on.
All of these crises are connected and all of these are driven by an unjust and unsustainable food system that exploits humans, other animals and the planet for the sake of profit. A violent and inefficient system that kills nearly 80 billion land animals and over 1 trillion aquatic animals every year for ‘food’, that drives deforestation and biodiversity loss and that uses 83% of farmland for animal agriculture while producing only 18% of calories.
To me, it is our domination of and disconnection from nature and our animal kin (and by extension our disconnection from each other and ourselves) that has got us into this mess. It is children and young people who will be leading the way out of it.
The Vegan Society
The Vegan Society supports the great work that VinE are initiating. Education is a crucial part of building a vegan future for us all. Developing moral values in young people will encourage more understanding of the benefits of veganism, and create a more inclusive education experience for everyone.
Vegan Organic Network
Educational charity
VON is delighted to support the VinE educational initiative. We are facing a point of no return: species extinction at an alarming rate, ocean deadzones, fishless oceans and a food system which has failed to change; treating sentient animals as “products”. Do we really want future generations to inherit this broken system? VinE is a catalyst for change. It is so needed and enables everyone to take decisive action to avert the crises we are all facing and to create positive change together.
OUR SUPPORTERS
Parents, students, teachers, professionals
Susanna Williams
Solicitor and Parent
Recently I realised the horrors of the egg and dairy industry. That day, I became vegan. The way humans abuse defenceless animals is heart breaking, and even more so, because it is completely unnecessary.
Read more
Children are born with a love for animals, but society tells them to ignore this and treat some with love and affection and others with contempt and indifference.
Most people would say they love animals, yet pay to have them killed and treated in the most abhorrent way. It is this hypocrisy which people are blind to.
Education is key. It can help people connect the dots so they can see this is only happening as a direct result of them buying or consuming animal products. That’s why I am pleased to support the VinE initiative: people are given all the information and tools to make the change that is so badly needed.
Amaya (age 13)
Advocate for animals
It would be great to have veganism taught in schools not just for the animals, but so that everyone can better understand me. I am proud to be part of VinE for the animals and other young people like me.
After becoming a vegan I no longer felt like a hypocrite and had more of a connection with animals knowing I wasn’t harming them.
Paula Hallam
RD PG Cert
I am passionate about helping and supporting families who choose to raise their children to show compassion and empathy for the other animals we share this planet with. My work is largely focused on educating and supporting parents about children’s nutrition and how to optimise this for their future health. This is why the work of VinE is so vital and I am delighted to support their mission and work.
Destine
VinE supporter
It’s important for children to be taught compassion for animals so they become compassionate adults. If we’re taught to be compassionate in school to animals it’ll be easier for us to learn to be compassionate to one another!
Greta Thunberg
“I am Vegan. I don’t eat animal products. I don’t use any animal products because of ethical, environmental and climate reasons.”
Emile Zola
“The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.”
Our Founder
Michelle St John
Founder and Director
Barrister-at-Law, BA(Hons) Social Anthropology
Michelle’s background is in law. She worked as a Crown Prosecutor, Magistrate and guest lectured on English Law at the renowned Jagiellonian University, Krakow.
Her interest in humane education was sparked by a vegan parent seeking advice in challenging the raising of pigs for food at his daughter’s school. Michelle was intrigued to learn that school farms in the UK actively involved children in caring for animals for slaughter. She questioned the educational merit of this practice as it appeared to go against children’s natural empathy for animals.
Michelle looked at how animals were considered across the curriculum, and found there were limited opportunities for children to critically think about the way we define and inter-relate with them. Whilst compassion for domestic pets appeared to be encouraged, empathy towards other animals, especially ‘food animals’ was not. She felt the promotion of animals as chiefly ‘products’, seriously undermined the teaching of empathy.
Her research culminated in a paper on humane education, which she presented as an independent scholar at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Meeting with leading academics and teaching professionals, she found a consensus of opinion supporting a paradigm shift in the way we teach children to view animals and our relationships with them.
This shift would contribute to children’s emotional, cognitive and social development whilst bringing hope for a more empathic, just and sustainable planet. She says, “these benefits, so passionately endorsed by educators and professionals working across the academic disciplines, inspired me to create the VinE initiative.”
Michelle lives in Cheshire with her husband Tony. She has seven rescued animals, which she thanks for teaching her empathy and the spiritual interconnectedness of all living beings.