Animal Aid Street Collection, Aylesbury 4/7/09

Each year the street collection co-ordinated by Jill Meade coincides with the Roald Dahl (children's) Festival which included a parade through the town centre. Trading appears to be affected during the parade including our street collection but our proceeds over the day still seem to be improving here inspite of the recession. We achieved our highest here for Animal Aid of £310 although we did start at 9am and finish at 5pm and ran a stall near the statue.

Foie-Gras Day of Action in Newport Pagnell, 18/7/09

Our activities are normally well supported by the locals in Newport Pagnell shopping centre and our Foie-Gras day was no different. We were targeting once again Robinson's restaurant that continues to offer foie-gras on its Spring menu. Shoppers were readily taking postcards and letters to send to the restaurant. The day of action was originally the idea of Mark Owen who also brought along PETA postcards for supporters to send to Selfridges who also still sell foie-gras.

Normally the town centre is quiet after 1pm but by coincidence there was a public event nearby named Parklife, an arts & music festival. With locals on their way to the venue, the town centre continued to be just as busy as in the morning which helped our campaigning. After distributing all of our postcards and letters soon after 3pm, we packed up the stall.

During the day we also met other new volunteers for future events.

Animal Aid Day of Action - Meat-Free Monday, Central Milton Keynes 25/7/09

On this Saturday for the past few years we have been running a street collection inside the Centre:MK but it was postponed by the shopping management, apparently due to the building work in Queens Court. As far as I could see shops were trading as normal in the area of the building work and shoppers were unaffected. By coincidence this national day of action was launched at short notice so filled the gap in our diary.

This day of action was rather different from the usual vegetarian/vegan stalls given that we were encouraging the meat eaters to try at least one meat-free day per week. A new leaflet was published by Animal Aid highlighting the plight of the polar bear with its deminishing ice sheet due to climate change. By switching to meat-free on one day per week, meat eaters can still help reduce the damaging greenhouse gas emissions.

Our stall was set-up at our normal pitch outside the Food Centre near the Waitrose / Jennings Bet entrance. Despite the limited volunteers available, Mark Owen & Peter Simpson managed to keep the stall covered from 10am - 5pm, distributing 100s of the new polar bear leaflet and other factory farming leaflets. Lots of veggie guides, recipes booklets and nutrition guides were also taken. The support was encouraging including many people who also informed us that they were already vegetarian.