Peanuts Wellbeing Sanctuary – A Place of Transformation, Part 1 of 2

Today it is our pleasure to share the work of Tracey Keenan and Mick Still, the vegan co-founders of Peanuts Wellbeing Sanctuary, a 40-hectare peaceful space in New South Wales, Australia. At this nurturing and fun-filled haven, established to help end the cycle of child and animal abuse, rescued animals are given a caring forever home. Children from traumatic backgrounds are regularly invited to visit the sanctuary. The kids relish the chance to interact with the animals who are pivotal in their healing experience. "With Peanuts Wellbeing Sanctuary, anyone that suffers any trauma or anything bad in their life, they can come here, and they can use the property to overcome those traumatic experiences. When we have camps and outings for the kids to come out here, we have lots of different activities that the kids partake in. And one of those activities is to use the kitchen and show the kids how to cook basic meals with basic ingredients that most homes have." The youth are delighted to learn that no animals are used when cooking at the sanctuary! Eating vegan meals sends such a powerful message to the children and every Peanuts visitor. It is an example of how we can exercise kindness and care in our everyday actions. "For us, being vegan, it's part of the whole cycle of things; we don't want to harm animals because we protect our animals, we love our animals. It seems kind of contradictory to still eat the animals. Being vegan, which we both did, like naturally off our own back, it's part of the whole experience of coming to Peanuts so that you eat vegan food, you hang out with the animals and hear their stories, and you can actually see the food chain - it gets broken with us. So being plant-based and letting people experience the plant-based food that we eat, they can have that separation between wanting to eat the animals and actually caring for them at the same time." We are elated to know that the youngsters who visit Peanuts Wellbeing Sanctuary benefit so much from this place of love.