G8 Wake Up Call - Avaaz runs a global TV ad campaign (left) and delivers a huge petition -- the G8 planning meeting agrees to put climate at the top of their agenda.

In February 2007, most world leaders were still asleep at the switch on the issue of climate change. Avaaz members sponsored a global television ad campaign with a provocative "Wake-Up Call" message. The ad aired on TV in India, the US and Europe and was covered in major media around the world, marking the launch of our global warming petition.

Within weeks we passed 100,000 signatures, and handed them over at a planning meeting for the G8 summit. Sigmar Gabriel, German environment minister, waved the petition at his fellow ministers as he pledged to meet our demand to put climate at the top of the summit agenda. The other ministers agreed, and the stage was set for the G8 summit in June.

G8 Summit - 400,000 Avaaz members sign a petition delivered to the German chair of the G8 summit negotiators. The leaders agree to start work on a new agreement.

In the run-up to June's G8+5 summit US President George Bush attempted to wreck global efforts to develop a new treaty to stop climate change. Avaaz members rallied and spread the word, and built the biggest global climate petition in history. We hand-delivered that petition to the Chairman of the G8 negotiators, as well the UK, French and Brazilian governments. During the Summit, we also marched with thousands of peaceful climate demonstrators, carrying banners in eight languages. Many leaders told us that our global voice assisted their effort to stand up to Bush at the negotiating table.

We and our allies won half a victory at the G8. We didn't get the binding emissions targets we'd campaigned for. But all the big polluters agreed to one of our central demands – that they begin work this year on a new global treaty to stop catastrophic climate change.

Live Earth - Avaaz is official global campaign partner for Live Earth, the largest climate change awareness-raising effort in history. Avaaz members organize more than 3000 events in 190 countries.

Avaaz was the official global campaign partner of the Live Earth Movement. On the day of the Live Earth concerts we held thousands of house-parties and community events in 125 countries.

Avaaz members and their friends watched a personal video-message from Al Gore and pledged to take action against climate change both politically and in their personal lives. While the Live Earth concerts may not have had a direct, measurable political impact, they were the largest single climate change awareness event in history. Avaaz members generated almost half of all the global events held for Live Earth.

Stop the Clash of Civilizations – our call to action becomes one of the most successful videos of all time on YouTube. Millions hear its message. Click to watch!

Our “Stop the Clash of Civilizations” video debunks the myth of a fundamental clash between Islam and the West and exposes it as a problem of politics—not cultures. It is now one of the all-time top videos on YouTube, with over 1.4 million views and 37,000 comments. It has won a string of awards and is being shown in classrooms around the globe.

The message of "Stop the Clash" is also a manifesto for Avaaz: people across cultures are refusing to be divided and joining together to act for a better world. “Global public opinion is the new superpower”. It also suggests a first step: finally securing real peace talks in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Real Peace Talks - Over 100,000 Avaaz members from around the world sponsor billboards in Israel and ads in major Israeli, Palestinian and international newspapers calling for real peace talks.

Most Israelis, Palestinians and citizens around the world support genuine peace talks leading to a fair two-state agreement – we’re campaigning creatively to get them heard where it counts.

This February, tens of thousands of Avaaz members targeted the first top-level Israeli-Palestinian-international summit in seven years, taking out ads in Israeli Ha’aretz, Palestinian al-Quds, and the Financial Times. Our demand: that the international community bring all sides to the table for real negotiations.

With the re-emergence of the Saudi Peace Initiative, local Avaaz members helped put up billboards in Jerusalem with a creative approach – offering fake travel deals to Arab states, that caused travel-loving Israelis who are barred from travel in the Middle East to think about one potential benefit of peace. The fresh angle won widespread praise, including in the conservative Jerusalem Post, and internationally in The Guardian.

When a couple of extremists vandalized our billboards, the Avaaz community refused to let Israeli, Palestinian and international public opinion be silenced. We rallied, spread the word and donated to put even more billboards back up in Tel Aviv as well as Jerusalem.

Stop the Escalation - Avaaz brings the voices of over 100,000 people from 198 countries to a protest in Washington and runs ads opposing American military escalation in American newspapers.

In January, our first ever campaign targeted the new Democratic Congress in the US, calling on Democrats to block George W Bush’s military escalation and work to end the war.

We began by placing a full-page ad in Roll Call (the paper read by every representative and staffer in the US Congress), and then mounted a “virtual peace march”, taking the voices of over 100,000 people from 198 countries around the world, scores of flags and huge banners to the streets of Washington DC in solidarity with hundreds of thousands of US peace demonstrators. American marchers cheered the global presence, and the colorful Avaaz marchers were covered by news media around the world. Congressional leaders have since made repeated attempts to dictate a change of course on Iraq, but so far President Bush has used his veto to block their efforts.

A NEW Plan for Iraq - Over 110,000 Avaaz members endorse a NEW plan for Iraq—Negotiation of a diplomatic solution, Empowering the international community to mediate, and Withdrawing all coalition troops.

Determined not to abandon Iraq to horror, we consulted our Iraqi members and international think-tanks to develop a “NEW” plan to end the war – all-party negotiations within Iraq and with neighbours, mediated by trustworthy international actors like the UN, and complete, responsible US withdrawal on a timeline agreed in line with the Iraqi people’s wishes.

We delivered this plan to key Iraqi, regional and international leaders attending the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in May. Sharm el-Sheikh failed to live up to our demands: leaders on all sides haven’t yet learned from their failures. But a growing number of leaders are supporting the principles of the NEW plan. September could see a watershed moment in the Iraq war, so we’re preparing a new push.

Close Guantanamo - 80,000 Avaaz members from every nation sponsor full-page ads in Washington DC newspapers expressing their outrage against the illegal prison in Guantanamo bay

In May, some American officials began to oppose the existence of Guantanamo Bay prison. We launched our campaign to tip the balance: demanding that Guantanamo Bay be closed forever, all prisoners be either tried in a legitimate court or immediately released, and that the US government finally respect international law. .

More than 80,000 of us from every country on the planet have signed, reinforcing the damage Guantanamo has done to the global reputation of the United States. We took this message of global disgust to Washington D.C. through full-page newspaper ads aimed at the administration and Congress.

Bills are now being introduced in Congress to close Guantanamo that cite the international outcry as a primary justification, and the US Supreme Court has decided to review Guantanamo cases. The pressure is working…

Global Poverty - Archbishop Desmond Tutu and tens of thousands of Avaaz members sign a letter to G8 Finance ministers demanding that they keep their promises to alleviate global poverty

Two years ago, the G8 club of rich countries pledged to double aid to Africa -- but despite these promises, G8 aid has actually decreased, and 20,000 children still die preventable deaths every day.

Our letter was published in large ads in the Financial Times and German press, and delivered to finance ministers’ teams. One of our GCAP allies reported, “There is no doubt that all the key officials saw it, and were made aware of the thousands of people worldwide who signed the AVAAZ petition in the 3 short days preceding the meeting”.

But despite eye-catching initiatives on global health, with just $3 billion more aid guaranteed by 2010, the G8 are set to fall way short of their $50 billion promise in 2005 -- and the Millennium Development Goals are way off track. We’ll be returning to this issue…

Fire Paul Wolfowitz - In response to Paul Wolfowitz’s policies and conduct as World Bank President, Avaaz produces a spoof video, petition and rolling protests that catch the imagination of the international media. Wolfowitz resigns.

When a corruption scandal broke around Wolfowitz, Avaaz broadened the story from an issue of propriety to show how unpopular his leadership was. We launched a "Fire Wolfowitz" petition and created “The Bank”, a video spoof starring Wolfowitz, based on sitcom “The Office”.

The video caught the imagination of the international news media including USA Today, the Guardian and the Washington Post, and aired on national television in France and Germany. It was also very popular among staff at the World Bank, who sent in many messages of support. One wrote: “The people of Avaaz have been amazing. There is no doubt you made an enormous difference”.

We teamed up with other activists to protest outside the Bank in Washington DC, then hand-delivered our petition carrying flags of countries around the world. A crowd of reporters turned out. Our petition was taken directly to the Board--the body in charge of Wolfowitz's fate. Wolfowitz stepped down within the week, and the global outcry helped make it happen.

Membership Growth - In just 6 months the Avaaz community has grown to 1.26 million members in every corner of the world.

In less than a year, Avaaz has grown like wild fire, moving past the 1 million mark in just a few months. Our 1.26 million subscribers hail from every country on earth, with 30% from the Global South, 40% from Europe, and large contingents in North and South America, and Australia. Avaaz continues to steadily grow at an unprecedented rate of an average of 20,000 new members per week.

Avaaz is growing because there is such a thing as a global community, of people around the world who care about global issues, and want to come together to achieve a different and better world. Almost every new member of Avaaz has learned about us from a friend of family member. The surveys we have done, and the level of participation in generating thousands of houseparties, and donating hundreds of thousands of euros, dollars, and yen, suggest that our new community is not just large, it is enthusiastic, committed, and serious about making a difference in the world.

Miliband Event -Avaaz is invited to co-host Mr Miliband’s first speech as the UK’s new Foreign Secretary. Miliband answers questions posed online by Avaaz members from around the world. Click here to see Miliband's answers to 20 Questions from Avaaz members.

Miliband is a rising star in the UK government, and one of the youngest Foreign Secretaries in history. In his first major foreign policy address, he planned a speech about a “new diplomacy” in which nations didn’t just seek their national interest, but were responsive to the views of people around the world. He cited Avaaz as “the best of the new”, and asked us to co-host the address.

After the speech, Miliband took questions from Avaaz members in Pakistan, Nigeria and the United States, and was presented with a book of thousands of pieces of advice, encouragement, and warning from Avaaz members around the world. The whole event was broadcast live on BBC and Sky television, and carried on the evening news.

Press Coverage – “Some ideas are just so good that once you hear them explained, you wonder, Why hasn't anyone done this already? Avaaz is just such an idea.” Lisa Featherstone, The Nation

In just six months, Avaaz has received extensive international press coverage. We are gradually establishing ourselves as a megaphone of global public opinion and pioneers in large scale global mobilization for global justice. The media has portrayed Avaaz as poised to “give world leaders a deafening wake-up call. ” (The Economist)

Journalists from Sao Paulo to Stockholm repeatedly approach Avaaz to get a feel for the world’s opinion on issues like Climate Change and the war in Iraq. Avaaz campaigns have been covered in the Economist, the Independent, the Jerusalem Post, the BBC, UPI, The Guardian, the Washington Post, Guardian Online, El Universal, Liberation, O Estado de Sao Paolo, ABC News, and Jetzt.