CWI's Vegas VegFest: our 7th festival!

9/30/2024

On Saturday, September 28, CWI produced our 7th Vegas VegFest. Despite the historically high temperatures that added almost 20 degrees to the thermometer (!!), we hosted a fun day of food, shopping, entertainment, and educational talks.

We were glad to be the home for the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine's first Let's Beat Breast Cancer event in Las Vegas. They brought the Las Vegas Korabo Taiko Japanese traditional arts drums ensemble, which made a powerful start to the festival!

As always, our food vendors were a hit! This year, many vendors traveled 300+ miles from Southern California to join us at our festival. Las Vegans were excited to greet and eat with new vendors and old friends.

We were also thrilled to be able to celebrate local "Vegan Heroes" to celebrate their contributions to veganism in the Vegas community. This year we honored activist and author Steven Lee August and activist, restaurateur and business woman Kristen Corral, the co-founder of Tacotarian.

CWI Executive Director Carrie also gave a strong talk about speciesism and getting active for animals. She shared this in conjunction with some possibly surprising news: after creating/developing Vegas VegFest over the last 10 years and growing it into one of the best vegan festivals in the country, CWI will no longer be hosting vegan festivals in the future.

We want to be clear: we are still committed to working for all animals. However, what we have found over the last few years is that interest in vegan festivals is declining as vegan options become more prevalent in stores and restaurants. Vegas VegFest creates a huge financial risk for CWI, and -- especially this year -- it has become more than we can bear.

With only one staff member and our volunteers located across the country and no dedicated office space, producing the festival is becoming increasingly more challenging. It simply doesn't make sense to devote two months of work time to a festival that fewer and fewer people are opting to attend. While this was unfortunately compounded this year by brutally hot temperatures, the low attendance and difficulties in obtaining sponsors and vendors (which is not something that has presented a problem in the past) makes the future of the event too uncertain for small CWI to gamble on.

So, with a heavy heart, we put this significant part of our programming behind us so that we can focus on our other campaigns. We never say never, however! If there is a time in which it makes sense to bring Vegas VegFest back -- we may do just that, particularly if we fund a dedicated underwriter.

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored, participated, donated, or attended over the year!