Bristol Vegans co ordinator Ellen Howard has been nominated for the ‘Unsung Heroes’ vegan award!

At the wonderful NW Vegan Festival in Manchester we announced the Unsung Vegan Hero Awards. People there were keen to show their appreciation of those wonderful people who do such great veganising on the ground. Mary and Ronny who organised the excellent festival are lovely unsung heroes themselves – so please nominate them next year. Thanks so much to Niki O'Leary and Tim Barford for helping us give out the awards – another two great contenders to nominate for next year!

Here's Ellen's nomination – unfortunately she didnt win but it was brilliant to see her efforts recognised! The two winners are profiled below Ellen.

Ellen Howard from Bristol Vegans – “She’s choice and has done a very difficult thing in Bristol which is bring people together as a social group, she’s done really well and deserves a shout for her excellent attitude to it all. One look at the photo from the recent Bristol Vegans dinner and you can see we are a happy bunch of campers and that’s largely due to Ellen's work. Bristol Vegans now has over 130 members on our mailing list, and we're less than two years old!”

The 2008 Unsung Heroes 1st place – Caroline McAleese and Vegan Campaigns. She a major organiser for Vegan Campaigns London (a fantastic bunch of motivated people, all star veganisers themselves). She's a wonderful motivator and helps Vegan Campaigns to be such a cohesive positive veganising force to be reckoned with. She was strongly involved in organising the London Vegan Festival this year, as well as a host of free food fairs and other activities. “She's fantastic. And she's unsung. And she's a heroine.” “The brilliance of Caroline cannot be doubted and the real strength of our group is in our ability to work collectively, using everyones ideas, input and talents.” 2nd place – Paul Blanchard. In January 2007 Paul went vegan in the process of creating www.banfoiegras.org.uk, a campaign to ban the UK sale of foie gras, gaining huge international media attention. It included a motion to York Council, a 10 Downing Street petition (9,000 signatures) and a Parliamentary Early Day Motion (supported by 160 MPs). He secured support from Ben Bradshaw MP backing a call for a consumer boycott. With major animal welfare organisations behind the campaign, four councils and major stores banned its sale. Paul appeared on all major news programmes to raise awareness of the welfare costs of foie gras, with 45,000 people visiting his site to look at the photos and video clips.

Thanks to Sophie and Stephen for organising these awards, and thanks to VeggieSnow and Redwood for the prizes!