Taking part
Every individual and organization is invited to participate in World Day for the End of Speciesism by organizing events on the Saturday of the last week of August to stand up for animals, online as well! All contributions are significant and appreciated.
Take action
- Organize a public event and get media coverage: a happening, a Cube of Truth, a march, a screening, an exhibition, a conference, or even a symposium; set up a stand, a press table; hand out leaflets, put up posters in your city, etc. You can find various examples from the videos and pictures from previous editions.
- For such actions, media coverage can make a big difference: if one or two media outlets are talking about it, your message will have a much broader reach, so consider sending out press releases!
- To spread the word and inspire new activists, it’s also important to take pictures and videos, regardless of the scope of your event. Show the setting of your action – posters, banners, costumes – and in addition to sharing on social media, don’t forget to send your best footage and images to info@end-of-speciesism.org so we can add them to our albums and posts for global press coverage.
- Announce the action on social media beforehand, and share it on Connect For Animals’ online calendar to ensure other advocates are informed!
- Finally, to assess what counterfactual impact your event may have, some informal metrics can be helpful, such as: counting the number of activists that participate and evaluating whether they seem to have been motivated or not by the action, tracking your interactions with passersby by noting both the initial sentiment (positive or negative) and their final consideration for animals’ interests, and of course, judging the tone of the media articles reporting on the event.
- Publicize this initiative, by spreading the word on social media, in vegetarian and vegan circles, among animal rights activists, in the environmental movement, etc.; by sending a press release for the media explaining that your organization supports this World Day and why it matters (this is one way of publicizing it: journalists may want to interview you or the organizing team).
- Look for and share awareness-raising and educational content on social media: videos, photos, articles, websites, etc. Use hashtags like #WoDES, #JMFS (Journée mondiale pour la fin du spécisme), and #EndSpeciesism to spread the word. Observe what types of engagement and reactions different approaches to this topic garner (number of likes, tone of the comments…) to get a better idea of what kind of posts effectively improve people’s attitudes toward sentient animals.
- Launch a pressure campaign against a neglected form of exploitation: against the sale of live aquatic animals for consumption; against fish farming for recreational fishing; against the consumption of chicken, which increases the number of animals bred and killed yearly, etc. Some of these campaigns, when run well, can lead to partial or total success. In all cases, they help raise public and media awareness of the problem posed by exploiting animals (and even invertebrates). Campaigns can be local (boycotting particular shops, putting pressure on town councils, etc.) or national (putting pressure on supermarkets, commercial chains, legislators, political parties, etc.). If you organize such a campaign, we would be very interested in being informed of its outcome, even long after the official date of the WoDES!
- Aim to include all sentient animals in your year-round advocacy. Beyond animal testing and the farming of land animals, which are often the primary focus of the animal rights movement, many other practices inflict massive suffering on non-human animals: commercial fishing, honeybee farming, fish stocking for recreational fisheries, factory farming ducks for meat, etc. It is therefore essential to underline the sentience of these less charismatic beings, highlight the ethical concerns raised by such practices, learn more about the scale of these industries in your country, and ensure these forgotten animals are not excluded from your estimates of the number of animals exploited by humans or killed for food every year.
- Help us financially: La Question aquatique, an organization based in France, is in charge of this worldwide campaign (administration of the website, production of media for activists such as leaflets and exhibitions, communication with other organizations). Any financial help is valuable. We would like to have a full-time employee to strengthen the campaign year-round.
- Invest time in the campaign: helping with translations, office work, coordinating events in your area, etc. All volunteer work is welcome!
- Keep in touch: while only a handful of volunteers are working on the campaign, we love hearing from you! We must know what you are planning, have a link to your events and website, and know how your plans are developing and how we can help you. Afterwards, remember to fill in the form we’ll send you to give us a brief account of how your event went, and of course, please share your videos and pictures with us!
Announce your action!
Contact us: info@end-of-speciesism.org