Mission:

Building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056 through a strategic, chapter-based system that emphasizes grassroots community-building, robust digital outreach, and innovative campaigns

Vision:

A world where all animals live safe, happy, and free from the tyranny of factory farms, slaughterhouses, and other animal-abusing institutions

Strategic goals

  1. Build thriving vegan communities in every major metro area across the Midwest

  2. Create, mobilize, and help activists network across the Midwest

  3. Increase the number of vegans across the Midwest

  4. Champion intersectionality within the animal rights movement and beyond

  5. Address the rapidly worsening climate and ecological emergency facing all life on Earth

  6. Inspire large-scale generosity to combat the trillion-dollar animal abuse industry

  7. Transform institutions through successful pressure campaigns

Core values

We are compassionate.

We behave compassionately not only toward nonhuman animals, but also toward human victims of other injustices, from sexism and racism to homophobia and ableism. Justice, love, respect, and compassion for all mandate we treat each other respectfully, fairly, and compassionately.

We are animal-focused.

We prioritize the rights, lives, and wellbeing of all animals. Their suffering, pain, and oppression take center stage in our organization, and we will always pursue whichever course of action helps the greatest number of animals to the greatest extent possible.

We are innovative.

We create forward-thinking solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing our movement, building upon the models deployed by other chapter-building animal rights organizations. We recombine elements of other successful organizations in creative ways, generating distinctive synergies.

We are community-oriented.

We believe that community is the foundation of any successful movement, and we are committed to building thriving vegan communities that power the movement for animal freedom. By investing heartily in community, we can build the largest, most resilient and impactful movement possible.

We are strategic.

We focus our resources in strategic ways to drive meaningful, long-term change that saves lives, reduces suffering, and transforms society. We believe that our unique theory of change is critical to revolutionizing the animal freedom movement and maximizing our movement’s chances of success.

Global board

  • Kyle Luzynski

    Executive Director

  • Al Gerber

    Board President

  • Jahnavi Maru

    Vice President

  • Laura Robinson

    Treasurer

  • John Luzynski

    Director

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History

Project Animal Freedom was founded on October 19th, 2018, by Kyle Luzynski. Since then, we have cemented ourselves as the fastest-growing animal rights organization in the Midwest, launching over a dozen chapters and organizing over 400 events in pursuit of our mission.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we moved many of our activities online. This move greatly strengthened our organization, enabling us to reach people across the country and around the world. Since then, we have reached over 20 million people through our social media outreach.

In 2021, we decided to narrow our focus from building a fully vegan world by 2056 to building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056. This strategic refocusing allowed us to redouble our efforts across the Midwest, greatly increasing our regional impact. We also embraced a chapter model the same year, launching our first chapter outside St. Louis in Springfield, Missouri.

Between 2020 and 2022, we debuted some of our most iconic events, including our Vegan Climate Summit, Gay Vegan Expo, and Veganic Gardening 101 class. We would later add our Disabled Vegan Expo and other more experimental events, like Veganism for Atheists and Veganism for Progressives, to our lineup.

In 2022 and 2023, we played a significant role in promoting the Worldwide Vegan Chalking Night, founded by Ismael García Martín. We would debut our first original worldwide day of action, our Worldwide Vegan Climate March, in May of 2023.

In 2024, we reached over 11.2 million people through Facebook outreach alone, our Vegan Climate Summit reached a record-breaking 411,000 people, and we launched three new chapters, with our Decatur, Illinois, chapter being named Chapter of the Year. Their unprecedented success in a community with just 68,000 residents proved our organizing model can succeed almost anywhere.