First Ever Leafleting Experience!

Last Friday at a local festival, I went leafleting for the first time ever! I was handing out Why Vegan? booklets from Vegan Outreach. I was expecting to be there handing out booklets for at least an hour, but when I started with about 70 booklets, they were gone within half an hour! WOW! It was definitely not what I expected, which was lots of people grilling me for information and wondering why a 13-year-old was concerning herself with animals. But no! Yippee! The leafleting was surprisingly easy, all I did was say "Brochure for animals?" while holding out a leaflet right in front of the person passing, and they either said "Sure" or "No thanks." And to my pleasure, no rude comments!



So anyway, I wanted to give some tips for those teens and children who want to leaflet. Don't be afraid! Just do it!

PREPARATION:

• Wear nice looking, presentable, clean cloths. Have your hair looking nice, and if your wearing makeup, have it be very light and friendly. You don't want to look like a raccoon (no offense to raccoons! But physical features should stay true to the animal!), and you want to look professional so people will take you seriously.

• When choosing the place to leaflet, choose a place or event that will have lots of people, yet where your not in the way too much.

• Choose how many booklets to order depending on the crowd or foot traffic of people who will be offered the booklet. A lot goes in a short amount of time. Be prepared!

• Before leafleting, remember what your intentions are. For me, it's to raise awareness about the animals suffering, and to provide information for a solution-- veganism. If you have your intentions straight, you will answer vegan related questions with ease.

DURING THE LEAFLETING:

• Always be polite, kind, and SMILE SMILE SMILE. :)

• If someone refuses the booklet, just say something like: "Okay, well, have a nice day!"

• If someone says something like: "I like meat" you can say something back like: "This booklet is for people who like meat" or: "Well then you'll like this, it has plenty pictures of meat in it."

• If someone asks a question be brief and polite. And if they ask something that really doesn't have to do with the topic, just be polite and always bring it back to what is relevant. So if someone says: "What about the insects killed in the growing of vegetables, don't you care about them?" You can politely say back: "Yes insects are killed in the process of vegetable growing, but insects are also killed in the growing of way more crops for animals raised and killed for human consumption. The fact is insects, humans, and farm animals are dying because of factory farms, and the suffering of them can be put to a stop." (Hope that didn't sound too corny)

• When offering someone a booklet, try holding it in front of his/her stomach, or putting it out before they are right in front of you. This lets them take a leaflet with little effort, so you don't seem like a nuisance.

• Always have a stack of leaflets in your hands, and keep more easily accessible, such as in a bag right behind you, or a bag slung around your shoulders.

• Smile, smile, smile

• SMILE (OK I think you get it now)

AFTER THE LEAFLETING:

• Relax, you helped the animals and now treat yourself to a break!
  

As an extra, I want to credit the book-- "Striking at the Roots A practical guide to animal activism" -By Mark Hawthorne that I got a lot of my leafleting tips from. The book is all about ways to be an efficient animal activist. If you've ever said or thought: "I want to help animals but I don't know how," then this the book for you! I have a link on the sidebar under Recommended Readings that will take you the book at Amazon.

Hope this helps for all of those who want to leaflet.

For the animals-
-VEGirl