Youth Scholarship Contest Recipients
2025 Prompt: A Journey to Justice: Amplifying Every Voice
Illustration Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Ty Orchards
He/Him, 22
Originally from Boston, I moved to Los Angeles in 2022 to pursue a career in the arts. I’m currently in my senior year studying illustration/comm arts at Otis College of Art and Design. A cornerstone of my creative and personal practice is using my voice in the fight for intersectional liberation & social change.
The Hypocrisy
Alana Murray
24
Alana is a freshman in college pursuing a degree in studio arts. She is passionate about learning how art and nature in public spaces can be used to better people’s lives. She loves to read fantasy novels and go on hikes, (bonus points if mountains are involved).
Choices
Anonymous
16
I’m graduating this year from high school. In CA.
More than “Meat”
Writing Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Smriti Mehta
She/Her, 17
Hi, I’m Smriti Mehta (she/her). I’m from Pleasanton, California, and am currently a senior at Amador Valley High School. I’m passionate about nutrition and public policy and plan to study both in college.
Silent Labor, Loud Justice.
Maria bends low in a sun-scorched strawberry field, her hands raw from pesticides, her wages too thin to feed her children.
Two thousand miles away, Jamal trudges past a dozen fast-food chains, the lone grocery store’s wilted lettuce mocking his hunger.
Across the ocean, Kojo swings a machete through the thick, humid air, his childhood carved away with every cocoa pod he slices open.
They are the unseen laborers of our food system—exploited, resilient, and defiant. Alone, they are whispers. Together, they are a reckoning.
Justice isn’t a scattered fight. It’s a shared war.
Tanvi Kalirawana
She/Her, 15
Hollow Harvest
They call it abundance,
rows of green stretching wide as the sky,
factories humming, hands moving,
the endless churn of plenty.
But what is plenty,
when the fruit rots before reaching the starving,
when the hands that pick it
are cracked, raw, and unseen?
Adrian Rios
he/him, 24
Adrian Rios (he/him). I’m from Ontario, CA. I’m a 2024 graduate of Cal Poly Pomona. I majored in Geography with an emphasis in Environmental Studies and minored in Urban and Community Agriculture.
A Personal Account on the Intersectionality of Struggles and Identity
Something I am constantly asked by others is, “Why are you vegetarian?”. This is a common question that many who are following a plant-based diet are often asked. As someone who is male and Latino, I am not a person people expect to be vegetarian. In my culture, meat is a dominant aspect of our cuisine and cultural identity. On top of that masculinity is tied with eating meat in a display of dominance and strength.
2024 Prompt: The importance of fostering compassion to save non-human animals and to create a kinder world.P
Illustration Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Dillion Jenkins
He/Him
Dillion is a sophomore in high school from Lexington, Kentucky. He loves visual art and painting and specializes in tactical crafts including knitting and crocheting his clothes.
Save Those Who Can’t Save Themselves
Alana Murray
She/Her
Alana is a freshman in college pursuing a degree in studio arts. She is passionate about learning how art and nature in public spaces can be used to better people’s lives. She loves to read fantasy novels and go on hikes, (bonus points if mountains are involved).
Marielle Williams
She/Her
Marielle is a dual-degree rising sophomore at Duke University’s campus in Kunshan, China. There, she studies international relations and pre-law, with an intended career in international climate policy in the direction of a global plant-based food system. Outside of animal advocacy, she enjoys cooking, baking, running, and crochet.
Till the Calves Come Home
Writing Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Anonymous
Cultivating Compassion Across Communities
“Do you eat dog?” Growing up as a Chinese-American, this all-too-dreaded question came up frequently. While I could easily brush it off, the question always bothered me beyond its racial malevolence. In a conversation with my mother, I expressed my frustrations and she aptly pointed out, “Isn’t eating a dog no different from eating a cow, pig, or chicken?”…
Tabby Dimock
She/Her
Tabby, who also goes by Lord Tabby or The Computer Demon, is a vegan YouTube content creator, gamer, artist, and animal sanctuary founder who graduated from three different schools in 2023, Marion Public Schools, Pine River area schools, and the Career Tech Center all in Michigan. Tabby was a National Honor Society member and is a 5-time blood donor. She believes that helping the community is her life’s work and is honored to be doing this kind of work.
A Cat on a Farm
“I used to think dairy farms were bright and sunny with happy animals like in Children’s books…”
Vanessa Ong
She/Her
Vanessa is in 8th grade and enjoys writing and watching videos in her free time.
Cry for Compassion
“In a bustling city teeming with life, there lived a young woman named Sarah. Sarah wasn’t like everyone else—her heart ached for the animals whose lives were sealed within the cold walls of industrial farms. One fateful day, as she was walking in the aisles of a local grocery store, she stumbled upon a display of neatly packaged meat—an ominous reminder of the hidden suffering behind the products lining the shelves. Disturbed by the thought of the animals whose lives had been sacrificed for human consumption, Sarah felt a surge of compassion within her.”
2023 Prompt: The importance of worker justice in our food system and reasons why moving toward a vegan food system can create a positive change for all.
Illustration Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Junior Division
Jimin Lee
She/They
Jimin is a rising senior at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. She enjoys engaging with her community through her love for art, whether it be as the leader of the creative team within a local youth environmental nonprofit, by designing posters for various fundraising events, or by creating impactful visuals that tell a story about a certain issue. She believes the power of art conveys messages that words sometimes can’t, and is passionate about working through creativity to advocate for social causes!
This is Food Justice Justice
Jayde Boler
She/They
Jayde is a senior in high school and her passions include making art, reading and learning American Sign Language (ASL)! She enjoys spending time with friends, animals, and exploring new places.rking through creativity to advocate for social causes!
Who’s on Your Plate
Young Adult Division
Madi Burt
They/She
Madi is a second-year acting student at Wayne State University. When not on the stage, they are the manager of Metro Detroit’s first zero waste store. They’re also currently interning with a Michigan based non-profit focused on climate action.
Humane
Tabby Dimock
She/Her
Tabby, who also goes by Lord Tabby or The Computer Demon, is a vegan YouTube content creator, gamer, artist, and animal sanctuary founder who graduated from three different schools in 2023, Marion Public Schools, Pine River area schools, and the Career Tech Center all in Michigan. Tabby was a National Honor Society member and is a 5-time blood donor. She believes that helping the community is her life’s work and is honored to be doing this kind of work.
A Demon & her Friends
Writing Contest Award-Winning Recipients:
Junior Division
Ava Cuevas
She/Her
Ava is a rising senior at Chaparral High School. Her whole life she’s been passionate about animal rights and the food system and has been an advocate for this for 10+ years. In her free time, she loves to go on walks, spend time in her garden and with her cat Charlie.
Food
“Food. The fundamental base of all life; without it, life wouldn’t be possible. The millions of workers within our food system are the primary providers responsible for producing, collecting, and distributing the food on our plates. Although their significance to the world is substantial, their efforts and sacrifices go deeply unseen, resulting in their employers’ unethical treatment of workers. Workers’ health, rights, and mental health should not remain absent from the minds of their employed companies alongside us, the consumers. Many oppressed workers lie within the animal agriculture and fishery industries. Workers in these industries endure hazardous conditions, are severely overworked, and detrimentally affect their mental health”…
Amy Choi
She/Her
Corpse On Your Plate
““Chomp-” You bite into your glistening burger—patty and all—expecting the familiar sinking of teeth into meat. What if that meat were not truly what you thought it to be? What if the global meat industry had been lying to you for decades on end? Despite the horror of it all, such is the alarming reality of flesh for consumption. Graver so is the truth that both workers and animals alike are suffering endlessly to pay the price for our oblivion”…
Young Adult Division
Morgan Greenlaw
She/Her
Morgan is a rising sophomore at New York University studying Chemistry and Computer Science. She is vegan for the animals and co-hosted NYU’s first annual Plant-Based Food Festival as a broader effort to campaign for plant-based defaults on campus. In her free time, she loves going for hikes, picnicking, and journaling in nature.
These Legal Crimes
“Factory farm
Sounds nice
Sounds swell
Factory farm
Is the definition of hell
Take a step inside
And see for yourself”…
Addie Lentzner
She/Her
The Hidden History of Hershey
“The sound of swinging machetes, swooshing through leaves and sometimes hitting something solid, rings through the forest. Holding these dangerous tools are children, some as young as 11. Throughout West Africa, children are employed on cocoa farms. Most of them are working illegally, under the promise of an education that goes unfulfilled. These young children swinging machetes are the beginning of a cycle of production that ends with a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar in America. Thousands of kids pass out candy bars on Halloween, share chocolate as a dessert, and enjoy this delicacy without knowing its true story”…