09/20/08 Invitation to ZeGeVege Festival
Animal Friends invites you to the Zagreb main square on Saturday, September 20, to ZeGeVege – the 1st Croatian Festival of Sustainable Living
- From 10 A.M. until 10 P.M. with numerous exhibitors and a whole-day program on stage and around it, citizens will be able to find out more about the sustainable way of life and can enjoy in the concert of the famous Croatian vegetarian Goran Karan
At the ZeGeVege Festival there will be a health food restaurant which will offer vegan meals at promotional prices: veggie goulash, rice pasta with tofu and vegetables, as well as the cakes healthy apricot and chocolate cubes with a free Smart beverage. The meals will be served in fully biodegradable corn-based dishes. All the visitors of ZeGeVege Festival will be given booklets with recipes and useful advice on sustainable living.
The restaurant visitors will enter a competition round with abundant prizes. The first prize is a weekend for two at the vegetarian hotel Korinjak on the island of Iz, followed by valuable Encian, Alpro, Labud, and Kisko prize packages as well as the special prize, a vegetarian lunch for two on the Macrocruise sailing boat along with a day on the beach on the island of Krk.
Thirty stalls with exhibitors from different fields like health food, cosmetics and cleansers not tested on animals and ecological products will be available. Home and foreign organizations for animal rights and ecology will be presented along with others who will offer useful information to citizens, together with sampling and promotional sales. Then there is the Eco-toys stall with its humanitarian nature from which a part of the profit will go to the SMA.T organization – an organization of parents with children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy and tracheotomy. All the stalls will be lighted with low energy light bulbs which save energy and last longer than regular ones and in that way contribute to environmental protection.
The whole-day program of the ZeGeVege festival begins at 10 A.M. with an introductory greeting of the vice-head of the City Department for Agriculture and Forestry, Emil Tuk, and Mirela Holy, who will also briefly address the public together with Drago Plecko to talk about the importance of sustainable living.
Jozo Bozo, the illusionist, will entertain the youngest visitors in the morning, and the children will be able to watch a puppet show and make ecological toys at the Eco-toys stall. The long-time PETA activist and present coordinator for Lush cosmetics Andrew Butler will also perform on stage. In addition, there will be performances from dance groups Adams, Senzala, Rock 'N' Roll gymnasium, Tequila Mosquitos, jugglers Artistika and musicians: hip-hop artist SixthSense from California, singer and songwriter Dajana Mar, guitarist Miro Ljubenkov, Zagreb rock-band Popper, songwriter and singer Lea Dekleva, and the group Feminem. At this festival, singer, songwriter and vegan Suzana Horvat will also perform.
The concert of the long-time vegetarian Goran Karan will conclude the program.
The petition for the prohibition of selling plastic bags will be launched at the festival and a tree full of unwanted garbage will be set up in order to visually attract attention to the necessity of solving of this ecological issue.
Besides a power generating windmill and an electro-bicycle, a recycling yard will be set up and citizens will be able to watch video productions on vegetarian diet and animal rights in a separate tent.
The main sponsor of ZeGeVege is the City of Zagreb, while others include Encian, Gea, Metro Express, Vecernji list, Net.hr, Zale, Vectordesign, Arto, Europlakat, Libertis, Meridijan, and Biovega. The exhibitors are: Annapurna, Aromateka, Artas, Bernardin vrt, Bio-imanje Zrno, Biomedis, Drustvo za osvoboditev zivali in njihove pravice from Slovenia, Dvostruka duga, Eco pozitiva, Eko proizvod, Ekoigracke, Eko-natura, Encian, Gea, Kisko natura, Labud, Lush, OPG Lovrec Violeta, OPG Radanec, OPG Vladimir Sinko, Repro eko, the Shelter for Abandoned Animals in Dumovec, Freedom for Animals from Belgrade, Tomar, Eco inicijativa, Pomozimo hrtovima, Valsoia, the Waldorf school, Weleda, Zazivali! from Maribor, Zdrav zivot from Serbia.
The speech from Mirela Hoy and the program of the ZeGeVege Festival are available at www.zegevege.com.
For the photo gallery from the ZeGeVege Festival please click here.