history
friday, february 14, 2003
Ethical Vegetarian Alternative > about EVA > history
By the time EVA was born, the idea of founding an organisation for vegetarianism had been growing among a handful of vegetarians for quite some time. Maybe it all started when a couple of our founding members took their first bite out of a veggie burger? Of maybe it all goes back to some prior life experience, at a time when some of us were cows...
We'll probably never know. Anyway, as soon as some of our current board members took control of the official students' organisation advocating vegetarianism at the University of Ghent (Belgium), and managed to have a first edition of our 'Vegetarian Guide' printed using university subsidies, the ambition to do a better job ran high. After a while, we no longer wanted to restrict our target audience to just students, but intended to reach everyone in need of nformation. And that's how the idea of founding a non-profit organisation came into being. The plan first had to mature in our brooding minds, and was finally realised, after a lot of brainstorming about the name, on July 13, 2000 - the day EVA was born.
Seven people (now twelve) got on the administrative board and split up tasks, including the positions of chairman, webmaster, treasurer and scientific advisor. Each one of us had for a long time shown a passionate interest in vegetarianism, and at least one of us is suspected of having been a pig in a previous life.
On September 1st 2000 EVA officially took over the former Vegetarian Union of Belgium ("Vegetariërsvereniging vzw"), which had been promoting a vegetarian way of life throughout Flanders for more than twenty years. This honourable organisation merged with our structures, providing an essential support to our young organisation and adding to our further growth. After our press conference in December 2000 announcing the birth of EVA and the launch of our 'Vegeterian Guide' it became clear to us that the interest in and need for thorough information about vegetarianism were even higher than we had anticipated. In the meantime we've build up a respectable collection of members, and requests for information keep flowing in through regular mail or phone, while our mailbox is constantly stacked...
