Anima International Interview

[00:00:00]

Hi and welcome today. Great, great dot.com talks with Anima International. And I am here with the here. Go closer. A name that I’m sure she will correct me on, but works for Anima International. And this is a charity that is helping animals and in particularly farm animals, which I love, as you will hear me talk about in more episodes. And they do this by specializing in conducting investigations and corporate campaigns as well as securing legal minds, milestones for animals. So, Heidi, Brazil, how are you?

[00:00:38]

Hey, I’m very happy to speak with you. I love poltergeists. Mm hmm. It’s always a pleasure to participate in.

[00:00:47]

All right. I am very excited because I’m personally very passionate about animal welfare. So how would you describe your organization and what you do to someone that is not familiar with your costs?

[00:01:02]

So first of all, I think we focus on two different areas. One is directly connected to animal welfare. So we basically want to change the factory farming as it is now. in2. Better responding to animals needs. But at the same time, we also have lots of campaigns that want to change. Another part of the food system by making it more plant based friendly. So when we run welfare campaigns, we might, for example, speak with politicians and try to change laws in different countries because currently who work in nine countries or we might we might talk with companies to demand some higher standards from producers in terms of animal welfare. But in our fund based campaigns, we are expecting companies, for example, to introduce more fund based options or we even sometimes help them improve their fan base options or help them in naming them so that they are actually successful on the market.

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So which part of these two areas that you operate in? Are you the most passionate about yourself? Where do you see what is the most important?

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I think they really complement each other in a way, because when I think about how we can really change the world, I feel that a lot of it has to do with economy. And let’s say that nowadays we have. Cows milk with all the subsidies and all the regulations that aren’t really working against one. So once organizations scan, you can actually make people kind of pay the full price of some of the milk. But maybe we can we can also level level the system for fund based meals as well that are more sustainable off of the healthier, but actually don’t get so many subsidies that that many, many factory farm products are getting. So I kind of feel that one cannot live with another. And we want to make land based and plant based options better and cheaper and more easier to get and meat or animal products actually more expensive because they should be they should be more expensive because they are bad for us and they’re bad for the planet and for the animals, of course.

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So for someone that is not familiar with the cost. How come animal products are subsidized in the first place? It’s more expensive to produce the plant-based versions.

[00:03:56]

I think there are two reasons. One is that first, it started something sometime ago that we stopped basically imagining. Having like lunch or dinner without a piece of meat. It’s quite new actually, because because often when we speak with our grandparents fought for them, meat was quite. It was something that you would eat, for example, on Sunday or on some Christmas. This was definitely reality for Poland. I don’t know about other countries, but we definitely did not eat so much meat. But now. Is almost like a substitute of food in the sense that it’s not a meal. If it doesn’t contain meat and probably that’s why so many meat products are subsidized. Because because this is what people think of when they think food. At the same time, there is obviously a huge lobby. So usually when you’ve where you see subsidies, you will also see a big lobby behind it. And unfortunately, especially in European Union, the common cultural policy. I actually kind of helps and supports the system when the farms become bigger and bigger and especially the biggest farmers have to have more to gain than the small ones. And another part of it is also the economy of scale. So if people buy something a lot, it’s easy to make it cheaper and more popular. And so on. So this is also one one of the reasons why many fund based products are not cheap. It’s just that not enough people eat them so that they could use this economy of scale.

[00:05:47]

Right. So imagine now someone is listening and we face this problem and we have this subsidies for these huge corporations that are selling animal products and then we have not enough people eating the plans based product, that steak there was on a week and now it’s more like salad on the weekend. So how can this be changed? Do you have an example of what you do or what are you doing to change that? Because it could seem like a daunting task or whelming for someone.

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Well, it is definitely hard, and I think it’s a great example of so-called wicked problems where actually there is someone who thinks influencing each other that sometimes it’s even hard to say where to start. And that’s why we try to run a couple of. A couple of complaints at the same time so that that kind of create an ecosystem. So one thing we would do would be to really focus on getting media. There’s even some research showing that a popular media are speaking about animal welfare. People tends to reduce meat consumption as a result. Actually using media to share some messages is even better than having this like one to one conversation often because when people see something in the media, they know that not only them, but also other people see it at the same time. So they can trust that other people might be influenced as well and they wouldn’t like stick out. People don’t want to be weird. They want to be like others. So we focus a lot on the media. That’s why we also do investigations, because investigations are a great way to get media, because, you know, it’s carbon and there’s there’s always some drama. We reveal some something really horrid horrible to to delight. But at the same time. So we also trying to educate the public in the sense that if there are some media stories we would all saw, of course, put to put a lot of effort into social media.

[00:07:59]

Maybe, maybe collecting signatures of other petitions and they feel the petitions. People often think they’re only a political tool, but it’s just like with marketing when you try to get in touch with people who are interested in your cause. And then once they. Sign something and once once you have this connection, you can also step by step, give them some other information and make them and make them even more engaged to what you do. But at the same time, we also work with companies so we might teach their chaps to cook on base plan based lunches or something. This is actually often a problem that even good restaurants once they try to do something plant based. It’s really disappointing and sometimes because they don’t know how to cook the food. I like it. Even in a good place, you would get just just some some steamed the vegetables with ling olive oil. Fortunately, it’s less and less common, but but it but it still happens. We also run programs like can challenge when where you might sign up to get recipes and get advice and get community for a month to help you experiment with with plant-based diets. But for example, we also have a campaign where we focus more on stereotypes. So we started projects where we cooperate with very accomplished sportsmen. And we create.

[00:09:44]

Short videos where we mostly just present the people who are, let’s say I know like the world champion in my tie or are an accomplished bodybuilder. And those those videos are just short stories of those people. And somewhere they mentioned that most of their accomplishments were made on plant based diet, and because those those videos are not really in your face. They just kind of mentioned that plant based diet is absolutely okay for you if you want to be very good at sports. We were able to get this deal that all those videos are being shown in the gyms. Like usually when you when you have a gym, they’re smart. Yeah. And here our focus was more on some Spetz specific challenges for people who might try plant based diet. And one of them is very specific form. I would say there is sexism and this like assuming that plant based diet is. And I know like woman. So. So you refocussed focus more on masculinity, add on the fight. Apparently there’s there’s also there’s also research showing that one of the biggest challenges for men in trying and trying to plant based diet is the stereotype saying that’s. Basically, masculinity equals eating meat. So by by showing people who are really good at sports, often sports that are also very demanding. Like like bodybuilding for. Or something like this. We tried to combat this.

[00:11:40]

And I have three male friends who saw the movie game changers and decided to switch over to a vegan diet. And I think they are doing the same quirky concept that you mentioned here to show that you can perform athletically at a top level on a vegan diet. I also love that. I hadn’t thought about it that way. But when someone is getting exposed to a message and they know more people are getting exposed to the same message, create some kind of sense of community that there are more people doing this, and then it’s easier to doing something compared to if you’re on your own. And I love the part about challenges as well. It seems like you’re trying to hit different kinds of psyches out there and realize that different types of communications are needed to reach different people. So. Now, you. When you’re moving forward with your product, if something really, really great can happen in the next year, why would that be for you?

[00:12:39]

At this moment, this would be probably about money because we have lots of projects that are still somewhere. I don’t know in the file. So we have we have some we have some ideas that we we are not able to develop yet because of because of the lack of resources. But other than that, I would say that we are in quite good place in the sense that I think we are an organization that. Tries to think strategically in terms of campaigns, but at the same time, most of our focus actually is on how we work internally. Our thinking is that if we are good in the sense that people are happy, they are motivated. They’re excited with the work that we will actually windows campaigns that we plant. I feel like it sometimes sometimes counter intuitive, but I feel that especially if you’re if you work in an NGO, but probably in companies, it might it might work similarly if you focus a lot on. Your goals and not enough on the well-being of people you might actually achieve. Need there?

[00:13:58]

I think so, too. We have that philosophy at great dot com that we want to make sure people are very happy or well taken care of, feel safe. They work with something they’re passionate about because we think over time that will actually lead to higher productivity. If you can keep people for longer, they will work from a place where they have more energy. So what strategies do you have at your organization to accomplish that?

[00:14:23]

I would say that we focus a lot on like one to one communication in the sense that we believe that building trust and building psychological safety in people is very important. So whenever we have an opportunity like we work remotely in a couple of countries. So sometimes we would really invest a lot of time to just visit our colleagues and spend time together. We feel that often going together to have a coffee is one of the most important things you could do, because a lot of it is really about trust. And especially now when we are working in an international environment, we see even more and more how investing in building trust between people is really saving us a lot of a lot of time in the future. In because court conflicts are very costly for the organization. People can leave. The leadership might be involved in like months off solving the issues or sometimes we might end up in court or some make this like I know about lots of companies or NGOs where that ended up, you know, with people suing each other often because of very stupid things. So. So that’s why I think it’s often about that, you know, ego hurt feelings, things like this. So I would I would rather invest a lot of time in preventing it. By actually taking time to really speak about things to. Oh, I also see that the more I know about people I work with, the more I understand that their challenges. So it’s. You’re not so, so likely to judge them that, you know, they’re not doing the work like they should do or something like this. So I really I really believe in it. But it’s not like I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like it’s. Amazing management idea that has like an acronym or something like human contact.

[00:16:36]

See leadership. We’ve got one.

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I read a lot of books about leadership, leadership and management, things like this because one in which one is your favorite.

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This is super interesting to me. I wish we had another podcast to talk about this. And we have this very much the same philosophies of growth.

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I think I can give two titles. Yes. So first book and it’s really inspired us. Was Worse when Weiss by Eric Foulk Finger.

[00:17:06]

Maybe now I’m mis thinking swarm was swarm lice.

[00:17:13]

I look at it and I leave it in the description below, but it’s thick fog fingers, Swedish or something that sounds very Swedish.

[00:17:20]

Yeah, he’s the he’s the person who started started the Pirate Party.

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He’s connected to Pirate Bay.

[00:17:29]

And another another is hard facts. Dangerous half truths and total nonsense. There’s some subtitle. Something about evidence based management’s very interesting.

[00:17:47]

May I share my favorite communication book?

[00:17:48]

Sure. It’s called Nonviolent Communication for anyone out there.

[00:17:53]

That one is transforming connection and relationships with people in my experience.

[00:18:02]

All right. So we’re coming up towards the end. We did talk a little bit, but that was worth it. I had so much fun. I think what you are speaking about in building an organization is super important to make it last for a long time to make an organization be sustainable. So let’s say someone is listening to this, being excited about the work you do with that. You want to change factory farming, inspire to more plant based diet. What can they do to help support your cause?

[00:18:30]

Well, I would look around in their countries for good organizations because often you can really help a lot with just sharing your expertise or just you can volunteering Swanton. That’s one thing if you don’t have time. Then donating to effective charity. This is also a good solution solution. And if you ever have doubts where to donate your money, go to the website of animal charity evaluators. Because this is an American organization that. Basically started to. Their goal is to evaluate their organizations and advise donors how to spend their money the best way.

[00:19:14]

Thank you very much. The brochure for did I say that even close, right?

[00:19:19]

Actually, the second time it was really good, the brochure.

[00:19:23]

Ok. Thank you so much for being on our podcast. And I wish you the best of luck with your work. Thank you. And for everyone listening.