IVU
Online News - January 2007
Table of
Contents
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- New free
registered groups added to the IVU database in the last month
------------------
 Videos
From Goa 2006 IVU World Vegetarian Congress
For those who missed the 2006 IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Goa,
you can now view videos from the Congress, courtesy of VegTV.com,
at www.ivu.org/congress/2006
------------------
 Special
Dresden 2008 Invitation To Eastern European Leaders
Are you a leader of a vegetarian/vegan society in Eastern Europe?
If so, you could be considered for financial support from IVU to attend
the 38th IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Dresden, 2008. We might
also be able to offer limited support to leaders of veg groups in
other developing countries, but Eastern Europe will be the priority
for this Congress, given its proximity to Germany.
A grant application
form is linked from the Congress Registration form at: www.ivu.org/congress/2008
------------------
 New
IVU Member Society and Business Supporter:
------------------
 IVU
India Website
A website has been launched for IVU India: www.ivu.org/india
The IVU India coordinator is Shankar Narayan:
------------------
Regional
Coordinators For Asia And Australasia/Oceania
Ten countries from Asia and Australasia/Oceania were represented at
the IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Goa, India this past September,
the highest number we've ever had from those regions. Jashu Shah had
announced some time back that he would retire during the Congress,
after 24 years as Regional Secretary/Coordinator for Asia, and Robert
Fraser had also indicated his intention to step down after 7 years
as RC for Australasia. Public thanks are not often IVU's strongpoint,
but their efforts on our behalf have been appreciated.
As a result
of all this the International Council (IC) has now redrawn the IVU
regions for that part of the world, with two rather different regions,
and four people to replace the previous two. The main step was to
recognise that Asia not only has the two most populous countries on
the planet, China and India, but it also has far more vegetarians
than the rest of the world, and IVU needs to be more active throughout
Asia.
 We
now have two new regions: Region 1: South & West Asia - Regional
Coordinator, Shankar Narayan, President of the Indian Vegan Society.
Shankar will be assisted by Dan Arbel from Israel, President of the
International Jewish Vegetarian Society (who manages to communicate
with Muslim vegetarians). Shankar also has a specific role as IVU
Coordinator for India, where he will be collecting the new lower-rate
subscriptions, maintaining a local IVU bank account, and coordinating
the ivu-india email group. Both were elected to IC at the Goa Congress.
 Region
2: East/SE Asia & Oceania - Regional Coordinator, Susianto Tseng,
C.O.O. of the Indonesian Vegetarian Society. Indonesia is the world's
4th most populous country (after China, India and USA), and has a
surprising number of vegetarians. Susianto will be assisted by George
Jacobs, president of the Vegetarian Society (Singapore), who has already
been co-opted to IC as the new editor of IVU Online News.
To view a
map of the new IVU regional line-up: www.ivu.org/members/council/contacts.html
------------------
 Email
Groups For The Regions
Want to communicate with other vegetarian activists from your part
of the world? Now you can via the various email groups that IVU has
set up. You can find them all near the top of the IVU website: www.ivu.org
------------------
World
Vegetarian Congress 2010
Preparation is moving along well for the IVU World Vegetarian Congress
2008 to be held in Dresden, Germany. Visit www.ivu.org/congress/2008
to learn more, to register and to offer to do a presentation at the
2008 Congress.
 Plans
for the 2010 IVU World Vegetarian Congress are still taking shape,
but there are a number of exciting possibilities. One is to have the
Congress in South Africa, as proposed by Isaac Obiora Dikeocha, of
South Africa, who was elected to the IVU council in Goa. Isaac is
now the IVU Regional Coordinator for Africa. Meanwhile, subscribe
to ivu-africa if you want to be more involved: groups.yahoo.com/group/ivu-africa
Speaking of exciting possibilities, the Indonesia Vegetarian Society
has proposed holding the Congress in their country in 2012. Of course,
these are just possibilities. Other ideas are also being considered.
More details at www.ivu.org/congress/2010
Much of the
activity reported in this and the previous article is due to the momentum
generated at the Goa Congress. Thus, the 2006 Congress organizers
and participants are due special thanks.
------------------
 Excerpt
From Keynote Address At IVU World Vegetarian Congress 2006
The keynote speaker at the 2006 IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Goa
was Dada J. P. Vaswani. The October 2006 issue of the newsletter of
the Vegetarian Society (Reverence for Life) of India contains a transcript
of the speech. Below is an excerpt. (please excuse the use of 'men'
to refer to all humans).
"Men have their
rights. Do animals have no rights? Men have their rights. Do they
not have duties towards the animals who have befriended man since
the dawn of creation: the dog, the horse, the cow? Do they have
no rights? The time has come when all animal lovers should come
together and formulate a charter of animal rights and a charter
of man's duties towards the animals. Every animal has certain fundamental
rights and the very first right of every animal I believe, the very
first right of every animal is the right to live, for we cannot
take away that which we cannot give. And since we cannot give life
to a dead creature, we have no right to take away the life of a
living one.
The year 1789 is a landmark
in the history of humanity. It was in that year over two centuries
ago that the French National Assembly adopted a declaration of the
rights of man. That was the beginning of a new era in the history
of humanity. Until then, men had no rights. Kings were sovereign'
they could do whatever they liked. The 18th century gave rights
to man. The 19th century gave rights to slaves, for there was a
time when slaves had no rights; they were treated as we treat animals
today. … The 18th century, as I said, gave rights to man. The
19th century gave rights to slaves. The 20th century has give rights
to women. The 21st century I verily believe will give rights to
animals. That will be a great and glorious day in the history of
humanity."
------------------
 How
To Make A Bleeding Chicken Poster With Dripping 'Blood'
Chickens are the most-eaten of our fellow land animals, with at least
40 billion eaten by humans every year. Loh Yeow Nguan, Education Officer
of Vegetarian Society (Singapore), helped design the following poster
to illustrate their plight. Please have a look at www.ivu.org/articles/net/poster.html
Here is Yeow's
advice on why and how to construct your own version. For help and
to share ideas, contact him at
The purpose behind creating the bleeding poster was to add a sense
of reality, to give life to the suffering of our fellow animals
without coming across as too gory. The poster grabs viewers' attention
to the message... and it works! The "bleeding" works by
just a simple siphon. Please see the diagram at www.ivu.org/articles/net/poster.html
No electrical pump used.
Some tips: use red poster colour with a dab of black or brown [food
dyes would be too transparent]. 2 little "sakura" bottles
of poster colours were mixed with 4 litres of water. The poster
should be mounted on compact styrofoam and laminated to prevent
ink from being absorbed by paper.
To initiate the siphoning, a syringe was used to fill about ½
a metre of plastic tubing with water from below, after unplugging
the needle.
If you have
other ideas to share via IVU News, please send them to the editor
------------------
 Generating
Revenue Via Google Ads
Below is an interview with John Davis, IVU manager, historian and
webmaster. John describes how IVU uses Google Ads on our website to
generate income. He also considers whether this might be applicable
to member societies. If you have other revenue ideas, please consider
sharing them via IVU News.
-
Vegetarian
societies are always looking for new ways to generate income to
support our efforts. What are IVU's main sources of revenue?
IVU has income
from various sources, but the Google ads are now making a significant
contribution.
-
In
layperson language, how do Google Ads work?
Businesses sign
up with Google and decide how much they want to pay for their advertising.
Websites also sign up by simply copying and pasting some coding
into the website, there are no fees involved for that. The display
can be customised in various ways to fit the design of the website.
The ads are then
displayed according to the content of the page. Google does a word
search and shows ads which appear to be relevant. This usually works
well but can sometimes go wrong as Google cannot, yet, discern the
context of the words - so an anti-meat page might well find itself
showing ads for meat because the word appears. However, there is
a filter which allows individual advertisers to be blocked if they
are not appropriate.
When a visitor
clicks on an advert, the website owner gets credited with a payment.
The amount varies considerably, depending on how much the advertiser
paid for the advert. Google transfers the money to the website owner's
bank account monthly.
-
How
did you first hear about Google Ads? Do other search engines, such
as Yahoo! have something similar? If so, why did IVU choose Google?
I saw Google Ads
start to appear on other websites and thought they would be worth
checking out. The income has turned out to be a lot more than expected.
I'm not aware of anything else quite the same.
-
I'm
sure that many vegetarian societies face a dilemma in that, on one
hand, they need revenue, but, on the other hand, they do not want
to become too commercialized. In relation to this dilemma, how do
you see Google Ads?
The vast majority
of ads that appear are from vegetarian and vegan businesses, and
some from other veg*n (vegetarian and vegan) non-profit groups.
This is perfectly consistent with IVU's aim of supporting veg*n
businesses, and we get paid in the process.
-
Will
it be relatively easy for a society's webmaster to start with Google
Ads?
Yes, provided they
are familiar with basic HTML coding. There is a link at the bottom
of all the ads.
-
How
much revenue have Google Ads been generating for IVU? Would you
expect national and local societies to be able to generate as much
revenue?
The income is 'per
click', and the number of clicks depends on how many hits the website
gets. The average 'click thru ratio' is about 1% - so for every
100 people who look at web page, one will click on an advert.
This is complicated
by the fact that different adverts are worth different amounts,
so the earnings per click vary a lot. The value of the adverts can
depend on where they come from, which in turn may depend on the
geographical target of your website. People in different countries
see different adverts, as Google knows where the visitors are; so,
they are shown something of local relevance as well as matching
the words on the page.
The IVU website
is currently attracting about 1.5 million page views per month,
which brings in a good return from the Google ads. If yours gets
less, you will probably earn less, but not necessarily. The only
way to find out is to try it and see for yourself.
-
Are
you aware of other ways that societies might use their websites
to generate revenue?
The two main ways
of generating income from any website are by attracting advertising,
or providing a service that individuals are willing to pay for.
The latter needs more sophisticated technology to give users individual
passwords, which would put the start up cost beyond the means of
many small vegetarian societies.
------------------
 Internet
Season's Greetings Card
The last issue of IVU News shared news of online greetings cards with
veg themes. Here is this year's Season's Greetings card prepared by
Vegetarian Society (Singapore). This year's card is a PowerPoint file
with a Global Warming theme. The file is about 800KB and can be found
at www.ivu.org/news/online/newyear07.pps
Your society
is most welcome to amend the card and use it as you see fit. If you
need help, feel free to contact
And, please
use IVU News as a way to share similar ideas.
------------------
 International
Crusader For Our Fellow Animals Passes Away
Last month, CIWF's founder, Peter Roberts of the UK, passed away.
A former dairy farmer, Roberts founded CIWF in 1967. For more about
his life and work: www.ciwf.org/home/news_peter_roberts.shtml
There's a
great obituary in the 30 Nov issue of The Economist. It's not available
F.O.C. online, but here are a couple excerpts:
WHAT commonplace activity
that most people never think to condemn will one day be seen as
a profoundly shameful crime deserving of nothing but moral outrage?
Those are the terms in which Tony Blair was talking this week about
the slave trade, and it would be an incurious soul who never thought
to ask whether future generations will not similarly come to condemn
some practice that is today widely accepted. Some may speculate
that the offensive activity will turn out to be waging wars, practising
abortion or driving 4X4s. Peter Roberts, however, would surely have
suggested 21st-century man's treatment of farm animals.
And this leaves aside
the cruelty of much production. Across the world over 50 billion
farm animals are killed each year, nearly 100,000 a minute. Even
in countries that consider themselves humane, animals can be treated
as little more than objects.
------------------
 What
Danger Lurks In Sheep Burps?
In 2006, The New Scientist magazine had at least two articles linking
global warming and the use of foods from our fellow animals.
------------------
 Do
Smarter People Go Veg?
A
study involving over 8000 people, published in the British
Medical Journal, found that children with higher IQs were more likely
to become vegetarians later in life, a study says. The study's lead
researcher, Catherine Gale, stated:
"The
finding that children with greater intelligence are more likely to
report being vegetarian as adults, together with the evidence on the
potential benefits of a vegetarian diet on heart health, may help
to explain why higher IQ in childhood or adolescence is linked with
a reduced risk of coronary heart disease in adult life."
------------------
 Nutrition
Newsletter From Speaker At 2004 IVU Congress
Sally Errey is a nutrition consultant who entertained and enlightened
us at the 2004 IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Brazil. Sally has
continued to inform the public about the benefits of veg diets. For
instance, she produces the Happy Tummy Times newsletter. For details,
please visit: www.myhappytummy.com
------------------
New
free registered groups added to the IVU database in the last month:
|
