Introduction to the Vegans of Steemit account, Who we are and our Vision & Mission

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Dear Vegan & Vegetarian community,

Welcome to the very first post of our brand new #vegansofsteemit account. This first post was long overdue, but unfortunately time constraints and personal projects have delayed my writing it. Let me start at the very beginning for those who don’t know me yet. I’m Eve (@evecab), and I’m the founder of this account.

Why create a @vegansofsteemit account?

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When I first joined Steemit in October last year, I noticed that there were plenty of communities out there, but none that was meant specifically for vegans. Since I was still transitioning to the new lifestyle myself, support of more experienced vegans was something that I needed, and logically, if such a need existed for me, it must exist for others too.

So I thought I would create a space where we could all get to know each other and exchange ideas. I started reading all the posts I could find under the #vegan tag, and invited their authors to join the Vegans of Steemit discord server. The group grew extremely quickly as new members just flooded in, and since then I’ve met some wonderful people on and offline.

A discord chat group is great of course, but it wasn’t enough. What we truly want to achieve is to collectively support each other better, and on Steemit that means distributing higher rewards to those who deserve it.

Moreover, even though I do not consume animals, this is not what defines me as a blogger, and it’s not what I mainly write about. Hence the idea to create a specific account which would make it a lot easier for readers who are interested in this particular topic to find information.

Who are the Vegans of Steemit?

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We are a community of like minded vegans and vegetarians on the Steemit platform from all over the globe, and we believe that we can create a better world by joining forces. Our Steemit publications, which are extremely diverse in terms of content, should be shared among all of us to gain more visibility, so that one day this group can become the vegan equivalent of Curie. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves...

Vision of Vegans of Steemit

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The vision of this group is to create a more compassionate and sustainable society free of animal cruelty.

My dream is to create a world in which no poor souls will be killed for food, with a sustainable society which will shift towards a plant-based diet.

Mission of Vegans of Steemit

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To inform the world of the cruelty of the fashion, cosmetics and meat & dairy industries, as well as facilitating help to newly turned vegans.

The role of Vegans of Steemit will be to publish and share content that will better inform consumers, and plant a seed in our readers’ brains by making them aware of animal cruelty so that we can grow the vegan community on the Steemit platform and outside.

What will you read on this page?

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The Vegans of Steemit account will feature a weekly newsletter (maybe more often later on as we grow), featuring selected posts from the vegan community. It will also introduce the authors, and consist of 2 or 3 different themes. These themes will include vegan recipes, posts about activism and animal rights, as well as a help & tips section for newly converted vegans or people who want to make the change and have questions.

Any suggestions are welcome, and please feel free to DM me on Discord to share your ideas.

We need your support!

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It doesn’t matter how great an idea is, if you don’t have the right people to help you with your project, you don’t get very far. Unfortunately, I can’t create a community and support it all by myself. We need to be a team, and that means collaborating and supporting each other.

There are several roles to be filled within @vegansofsteemit, but these are the main ones that come to my mind:

• Scouts who find new vegans and invite them to join our discord server and follow the main account
• Authors who would like to write the newsletter or articles for the main account (these would be rewarded with a percentage of the post payouts)
• Moderators in the discord group who keep conversations lively
• Delegations and people joining the voting trail on Steemauto.com so that we can offer better rewards to all the amazing vegan authors. Just click on this link to delegate a % of your voting power to support quality content (you can retract your vote at any time).

I would like to clarify that our voting trail only upvotes members who have proven that they are creating quality content consistently, in order to avoid votes going to waste on low grade posts.

Vegan witnesses on Steemit

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Last but not least, I would like to introduce our vegan witnesses, so that you can support them with your vote here

You can vote for up to 30 witnesses, and I believe that it can be of enormous help to our vegan community to have witnesses who share our values and principles, and who have good intentions for the platform.
For those who are not familiar with what each witness does and who they are, here’s a brief introduction of the vegan witnesses on Steemit, in their own words:

@teamsteem (Guillaume Cardinal)

• 34 years old
• Vegan for 3 years +
• Vegetarian for 5 years prior
• Active daily on Steem since May 2016
• Witness since September 2016
• The best place to know what I do as a witness is here

I've experience suffering and I've experienced its opposite. The last thing I want is to inflict suffering or deprive someone of his/her capacity to enjoy life.

Favorite quotes:

"Most people share the moral intuition that the infliction of suffering and death on a sentient being require some sort of justification and pleasure isn't a good justification but that's the only justification we have for eating them, wearing them and using them in most context." - Gary Francione

"The most ethical diet just so happens to be the most environmentally sound diet and just so happens to be the healthiest." – Dr. Michael Greger

@dragosroua

• kept my witness node running smoothly, with no missed blocks
• Updated my price feed twice, first time for 200% and second time for 300%, following a broader attempt of witnesses to normalize the SBD price, which, at the moment of writing this, is trading at almost $8
• Kept my SBD APR at 1%
• Kept the account registration fee at $1 (I use a script called steem witness toolbox, available for free on Github, for publishing the feed price and adjusting a few blockchain props)
• Kept the block size at 65,536
• Updated steem.supply with a minor release, mostly related to the way rewards are displayed, trying to adapt to the new SBD highs.

@ura-soul:

11 Year Vegan, creator of http://steemocean.com/

I aim to nurture life and make decisions that result in us feeling good and that are both compassionate and wise. I have 35 years experience of computing, a degree in Applied Computing and over 15 years of professional experience in the field. I have used social networks with the intent of healing, balancing, learning and evolving for 10 years - starting at tribe.net! I have been involved in designing a social network startup and also run my own social network at ureka.org. I now also run steemocean.com, which is a new platform to support Steemians as they learn about each other and it is intended to provide data that helps us make better decisions when voting and acting on the blockchain. Steem ocean has already been used to identify vote scams and those who could be said to be abusing the system.

As an artist, musician, designer and general guide towards balance, I am connected with a variety of high profile people both indirectly and directly who I am gradually on-boarding to Steem. I am also in the process of working to produce high quality educational videos that explain the mechanics of Steem/Steemit to improve the general understanding of what Steem is. Additionally, I have designs in mind for an entirely new UI for Steem that is intended to increase levels of balance in the ecosystem and I may also integrate a Smart Media Token into my existing platform at Ureka when the time is right. I have new ideas and requests from others almost every day regarding Steem, so everything might change quickly.. So stay tuned!

@krnel

I am on the Steem blockchain in order to share information about various topics to help change the world for the better. Specifically, I focus on moral truth and psychology/consciousness to understand ourselves better and how we can live better through moral principles. I am also here because I am rewarded for the content I put out.

As a Witness, what I offer is not technical improvements or apps for the blockchain, but informative quality knowledge. I want people to learn about meaningful information that can affect the quality of their lives, to change the current condition of the world through empowering information.

I want to change things in the world, and Steem is the platform through which I wanted to try to do that by spreading quality information. Quality information will raise the quality of our consciousness, our thinking, and as a result the overall quality of the world as well. Moral knowledge is the most important to do this.

My goal is to help change the world for the better. I want to use Steemit to do it. I appreciate all the support for the specific work I put out in that effort, and will also appreciate your support as a witness for the Steem blockchain. I want to take the new model of the blockchain changing the world, and keep going into changing ourselves so that we can change the world for the better.”

• SteemKURE (Kindred United To Reward Excellence) Curation Network
  consulting community members to help with their projects, such as @steempowertwins, @officialfuzzy, @steemnews.online and @steemtrail
• Trying to educate the community on issues going on in Steemit as well as regular society (check my blog page for raising awareness on self-knowledge)
• And now I'm running a witness node to provide reliable block production as a dependable and trustworthy individual.

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We are still in diapers with our follower base and voting power (for now it’s just me and 3 others), but Rome wasn’t built in one day, and I’m confident that we can grow this community together. I’m extremely passionate about Vegans of Steemit for several reasons: I value communities because together we can achieve way more than on our own, and also because most of us here are vegan, and thus in theory, we all have one thing in common. We do not want to harm other living beings, and live according to the non-aggression principle. This is what sets us apart from many other communities, and it’s also why this community is so dear to me.

If you think alike, please join our discord server and follow our account to read loads of interesting content around the topic of veganism.