At BARE our mission is to refresh, restore and revive our community by doing our part in making it a better place. As vegans and individuals who care deeply about social justice issues, we cannot ignore current events and we want to do our part to help. We are not experts in this field and we do not plan on filling their shoes. However, we have taken time during these past months to self educate; to listen and to learn and do our part not only to stand against racial injustice, but to be unabashedly anti-racist.
Understanding that these conversations can be difficult, and that there is a lot of work to be done, we had local social workers and counselors put together a list of resources regarding love, empathy, mental health, antiracism and the BLM movement. We wanted to share these for our team and community to use as a starting point. Please feel free to utilize the resources listed below, but don’t allow the internal work to stop there. We encourage you to keep the conversations going and to continually educate yourself on the issues. If you have any questions or would like to have a private conversation with one of our connections, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
LEAD WITH LOVE:
The key to being impactful and helpful to a cause is empathy. Empathy is when you try to perceive how someone is feeling about a situation and helps to identify how you can assist them. This article provides tips on how to try to be more empathetic:
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-be-more-empathetic
RESOURCES AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE BLM MOVEMENT AND HOW TO HELP:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/laugh-cry-live/202006/how-be-ally-racial-justice
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/outside-the-box/202006/becoming-part-the-solution
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/health/wellness-routine-health-pandemic-protests/index.html
OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES:
American Civil Liberties Union: https://www.aclu.org/
Citizen Action of New York: https://citizenactionny.org/about/
Mental Health America: https://www.mhanational.org/finding-help