“PEACE: Five Tales of Compassion for a Better World” by Cindy Vera (vegan), Part 1 of 2

Cindy Vera (vegan) is a dedicated humane educator, animal-people rights advocate, and children’s book author based in the US. Ms. Vera discusses the inspiration behind her collection of stories, “PEACE: Five Tales of Compassion for a Better World.” “And I thought: we have to teach children to be kind. That’s my whole goal, to start young and help build compassionate children so that we can stop some of the ugly stuff that’s going on in the world, including what we do to animals.”

Each story in “PEACE” represents a core value – perspective, education, appreciation, compassion, and empathy. “It’s about how to be a good person. And that was in having a beautiful perspective on life and seeing the positive things. Then, the second one – about education – is about grizzly bears who are helping polar bears who were displaced from their home. And they’re teaching them, and they’re accepting, and they’re loving. I think that that’s really important: to encourage kids to – and people – to be accepting of other people, regardless of what they look like, regardless of what language they speak. Compassion, that one’s really my vegan journey and how hard it was at the beginning. So, the one on compassion is about a little bear who does not want to kill for food anymore. And he walked away from everything he knew. Then he found out that he actually had a bunch of people who came with him.” Ms. Vera explains that the biggest challenge in going vegan is not the food itself, but the social adjustment that comes with the transition. “Once you go vegan, once you learn how to do it, it’s really not that hard. There’s a little bit of a learning process, but there are a lot of organizations that help with that.”