About this substack and its author
The articles on this blog are intended for everyone who is interested in reducing our massive consumption of animal products, for whatever reason. They are about strategies and ways of communication, but also about the personal challenges of being an effective activist for animals.
My name is Tobias Leenaert. I am the author of How to Create a Vegan World: a Pragmatic Approach (Lantern Press, 2017), which has been published in fourteen languages. I think about strategy and give presentations world-wide about the plant based movement and about vegan advocacy, to companies or NGOs, at universities and conferences.
I’m also co-founder of ProVeg International, a pro-vegan food awareness organization that wants to reduce the consumption of animal products worldwide with 50% by 2040. And I identify as an Effective Altruist. I think about the best ways to achieve a compassionate society. I’m also a slow opinionst.
I told myself I had to be a vegan more than ten years before I actually became one. I just loved meat too much. At university, someone finally helped me to stop eating it. I started to read, and wrote my master’s thesis about the human-animal relationship. By the time I graduated, the only thing I wanted to do was to help farmed animals. There were no opportunities in Belgium, so I went to the US for six months to do internships at various non-profits. Coming back, I cofounded EVA (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative – now Proveg Belgium), which in 2005 became the first veg organisation in the world to receive structural funding from its government. In 2009 we convinced our city of Ghent to become the first city in the world to officially support a weekly vegetarian day. I left my position as director in 2015, and apart from my work for Proveg, I’m also an independent speaker, consultant and writer.
I live in a hilly region in Belgium, together with my girlfriend Melanie, who runs our small animal sanctuary/B&b Feathery Forest. We rent out a cozy forest cabin to visitors.
You can book me for talks and panels, in companies, at conferences, for business, lay and activist audiences. I talk about everything that has to do with the protein transition, animal welfare, effective altruïsm, and other topics.
contact info:
tobias.leenaert@gmail.com
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter: @tobiasleenaert
Check out some of the videos on my other site, www.veganstrategist.org. Also, here are some audio and video interviews with me:
English
How the animal movement can do better - on Humane Hangouts
On Our Henhouse
On the Morality is Hard podcast
Dutch
De onstuitbare opmars van de planteneter - de Rudi en Freddie show (2022)
Over het pad naar een vegan wereld - De Vrije Gedachte (2024)
Dierenwelzijn: de goedkoopste manier om levens te verbeteren (2022)? - effectief doneren podcast
See more podcasts (in English and Dutch) here.