Avaaz
 |
|
| Founded | 2007 |
|---|---|
| Focus | Progressive NGO |
| Location | |
| Origins | New York |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Method | Petition, demonstrations, supporting independent press in conflict areas |
|
Key people
|
Ricken Patel (ED) |
| Website | www.avaaz.org |
Avaaz is a U.S. based civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. The Guardian considers it "the globe's largest and most powerful online activist network".
The name chosen for the community is a transliteration of the Persian word آواز (âvâz) meaning "voice" or "song", which was chosen because very similar words exist in many languages and less similar but cognate (related) words exist in most other Indo-European languages. The English word “” is also related.
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.
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.
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