Avaaz is a global civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. Its stated mission is to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want”. The organization operates in 15 languages, and states that it has more than twenty million members in 194 countries. According to The Guardian: “Avaaz is only five years old, but has exploded to become the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network.”
Avaaz.org was co-founded by Res Publica, a “community of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance, civic virtue and deliberative democracy”, and MoveOn.org, an American non-profit progressive public policy advocacy group. It was also supported by Service Employees International Union, a founding partner, and GetUp!, an Australian non-profit campaigning organization.
Avaaz’s individual co-founders include Ricken Patel, Tom Pravda, former Virginia congressman Tom Perriello, MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser, Australian progressive entrepreneur David Madden, Jeremy Heimans (co-founders of Purpose.com), and Andrea Woodhouse. The board consists of Ricken Patel (president), Tom Pravda (secretary), Eli Pariser (board chairman), and Ben Brandzel (treasurer).
Avaaz’s founding President and Executive Director is the Canadian-British Ricken Patel. He studied PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) at Balliol College, Oxford University. He received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University. He worked for the International Crisis Group around the world, including in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, where he says “he learnt how to bring rebel forces to the negotiation table, to monitor elections (covertly), to restore public faith in once corrupt political systems and to spot when foreign forces were being manipulated.” He returned to the US and volunteered for MoveOn.org, where he learned how to use online tools for activism.
Bookmark Avaaz.org
Excellent posts! See post 16. Looks like I should have checked back with the thread while I was researching to see what was being posted. lol!
What a vipers nest this is. I think we have just scratched the surface with this anti-Christian conglomerate.
Of course, it can’t be any other way with them. Christianity must be in service to and subordinate to the STATE. Any church who isn’t will be labeled “extremist.”