The Vegan Compassion Group was registered as a charity (Charity Commission number 327281) in 2019, though it had supported one or two projects as the Living Without Cruelty Trust prior to this.
Our mission is to fund specific projects that demonstrate vegan compassion in action. These currently consist of a combination of long-term initiatives such as school feeding programmes in Ethiopia and Uganda and short-term emergency food aid for victims of war.
We are a small charity. Our work springs from a certain frustration around the fact that people often don't know exactly where their contributions go when they make charitable donations even to the most laudable organisations.
Therefore, our donations are only made to individual projects where we can provide 100 per cent funding. In some instances this will be a one-off payment; in other cases, we offer guaranteed funding for a minimum period.
We take every care possible to build strong and durable relationships with effective partners on the ground who we trust and admire. These are usually fellow vegan organisations that share our vision, but where this is not the case, we work only with charities where we feel confident that they understand and respect our position.
Our distinct identity derives from our promotion of veganism, both for practical and ethical reasons. Far more people can be fed far more cheaply on plant-based foods. Livestock production is wasteful and a major contributor to greenhouse gas pollution Evidence suggests that well-balanced vegan diets have health advantages. But most importantly, we see veganism as a rejection of cruelty and a vindication of kindness and compassion, whether to humans or to other animals.
The balance we seek involves quietly emphasising our core values without sounding pious and excluding those who, while they may feel sympathetic to our work, do not embrace the complete vision.
Our goal is to be exclusively vegan without being exclusive to vegans.
Our funds are limited, so the projects we undertake must, by necessity, be relatively small themselves. This does, however, give us certain advantages. Our expenses are nil. We may incur certain accounting and banking costs, but that apart, all our funds go directly to our stated causes.
We hope to do much more in the future...
Whilst our projects are exclusively vegan, they are not exclusive to vegans!