Being an E-Campaigner

You are using one of the most powerful tools in campaigning right now. Getting information to people – whether it be Tony Blair or your cousin in Inverness – is one of the most important parts of campaigning for change and the internet and email have brought a whole new dimension to helping animals. Viva! can help you to make the most of that opportunity: on this website, every Viva! campaign page has contact details for people and organisations you can get in touch with. Most of those pages have specimen letters/emails for you to use if you wish and some even have “E-postcards”. (There are links to these pages and other useful links below.) Using just the information on this site, your keyboard and your mouse you can start campaigning right now!

There are three main ways to use your computer to help animals:

1. Writing to the Press

A letter in the local newspaper will reach thousands of people – often tens of thousands. Literally hundreds of letters by Viva! supporters are printed in the local press each year, bringing the message about animal suffering and vegetarianism to millions of people in total. It is one of the most effective campaigning tools we have and we’ve done everything we can to make it easy. Many of the Viva! Campaigns Action pages (see below) have specimen letters which you can copy or use as the basis for writing your own (you can see an example here) . Letters in your own words are often more effective so do please adapt our letters if you feel confident enough. Keep your letter fairly short (around 200-300 words if possible) and polite – remember, the paper is more likely to publish a letter if it shares information with readers, and less likely to publish if it’s about how outraged someone feels (even if you’ve good reason to be angry!). Always mention Viva!’s contact details at the bottom – sometimes the papers edit them out to save space but many print them and people do get in touch with us as a result. You can find the email addresses for many local papers by clicking here or, of course, in the paper itself (many papers are also available online too). You can also, of course, print out your letter and send it by post.

2. Contact companies, MPs and the Government

Getting in direct contact with companies involved in animal exploitation lets them know that they are under scrutiny and can help to make them change their policies. Marks & Spencer, for instance, recently stopped selling factory-farmed whole duck after a campaign by Viva! including thousands of people writing to them. The Government and MPs have immense power over animals by determining the laws which are supposed to protect them and, as politicians, they will not ignore public opinion if it is strong enough. Again, you’ll find contact addresses, specimen letters and often email addresses on our campaign pages. It is worth noting though that in the case of politicians, letters in your own words can often be more effective. There is also advice on our campaigns pages on how to find out who your MP is.

3. Contact people you know

“Ordinary” people have huge influence over animals’ lives too. Persuading someone you know to go vegetarian – or even just to cut down on meat or fish as a start – is incredibly rewarding and the information on this site can help you to do it. Forwarding a link to a web page is easy (see below) and if you’ve had discussions with friends, family or colleagues about vegetarianism, there may be information on this site which would help them understand the issues more clearly. Alternatively, you might be able to engage someone’s interest by sending them a link to a page which is relevant to them. If you know they shop in Tesco, for instance, send them the page on our Tesco investigation; if they love ducks, send them the page on duck factory farming. Perhaps you know someone who’s very concerned about the environment or global poverty: there’s information about those things in our Go Veggie section and in-depth analyses in the Viva! Guides. It doesn’t have to be a case of nagging people to turn veggie – just giving them information on something they are or might be interested in. Hopefully, once they’ve come to the site, they’ll want to read more.

Forwarding a link is easy: when you’ve found the page you want, just copy and paste its full address from the address bar (at the top of the page) into an email and send it to whoever you want.

All these ways of using your computer help to spread the word about vegetarianism and the treatment of animals. If you’d like to get even more involved, see our pages on delivering leaflets and being a Viva! campaigner .

Useful Pages

For a list of Viva! campaigns, click here. You’ll find links to the “Action” pages in the bar on the right hand side of each campaign page.

For a list of Viva! Guides click here

For answers to commonly-asked questions about vegetarianism, click here