The vegan charity ‘Million Dollar Vegan’, a campaign which offered to donate $1 million to charities if notable figures tried a vegan diet, has changed its name to Generation Vegan (GenV). The charity had already shifted its focus because of the pandemic, committing to donating a million vegan meals to communities in need. Now that it has reached its goal in July 2022, is undergoing another rebranding, with its new tagline, “Unite, Disrupt, Transform”. According to its website, “this is more than a new name and a shiny new website; it is a fundamental shift in how we think, communicate, and operate… veganism is our vision of a just world where respect can unite every sentient being and disrupt any form of oppression. Our purpose is to become the generation that brings veganism for all. We are creating a vegan world.”
Created by Mathew Glover, the co-founder of Veganuary who now runs the Vegan fast-food company VFC, GenV will continue its food justice work and significantly increase its production of social media films to expose the environmental, health, and ethical impacts of the animal agriculture industry. It will also launch five new free vegan challenges, consisting of a 30-day program and four seven-day challenges focused on animals, humanity, the planet, and health respectively. There will still be the old-style campaigns of asking prominent figures (like the Pope in the past) to try a vegan diet in exchange for a charitable donation — the next one to be announced soon.
The organisation would also work for better justice, diversity, equity, and inclusivity. On its website, it states the following: “We could see that Million Dollar Vegan did not represent us in our entirety, nor did it encompass our huge ambitions for what we want to achieve. It felt US-centric when our team is located in many different regions of the world. For some it certainly felt exclusive (‘million dollar’) when we desperately need people from all parts of all societies to help us shift the trajectory that humanity is currently on. In short, there were many communities our work just did not resonate with, and we asked ourselves: how can we achieve a vegan world if we don’t attract more and diverse people to our movement through collaborations, solidarity, and mutual support?”
Naomi Hallum, the GenV CEO, said to vegconomist, “The future of nutrition is plant-based. No question about it. It is the only way we can eat that is good for us, can feed the entire human population, will protect the environment from devastating pollution incidents, deforestation, and climate change, frees up land to allow nature to thrive, and significantly decreases the twin threats of antibiotic-resistant superbugs and global pandemics.”
