Having reached 20 million members, the organization is now the world's largest network of activists. But it is just one example of clicktavism or, as suggested by their success, a real force for change?

last week, a 36-year-old Ricken Patel gave the Commonwealth Conference at the Guildhall in London. It was entitled "The opportunity of our time" and promised a "new politics, a new activism, a new democracy."

boast sense of optimism contained in these sentences is typical Patel, a man who combines Panglossian platitudes with effect lasts policy We seductive. It is not a politician, but a billionaire megalomaniac or, but the founder and president of Avaaz, a group of online activists that aims to "bridge the gap between the world we have and the world most people want. "

If the mission statement sounds a bit vague and problematic soft, proves to be very successful in the world. Currently, there are 20 million members of Avaaz means "voice" in several languages ??making it the world's largest network of activists.

Since its inception in 2007, Avaaz has been involved in a series of campaigns such as climate change, challenge and Syrian uprising Rupert Murdoch. The organization specializes in sending requests by e-mail to its members as a way to galvanize public opinion.

There have been some notable successes - the group helped organize a campaign to stop the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix after the violent repression of protests against the government, and was the first NGOs to provide aid to Burma after the cyclone in 2008.

Among the setback was the climate change summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Patel described as "decade of Woodstock version or the Spanish Civil War." Avaaz was hoping to get a engagement radical nature of connection through an intense online campaign targeting actors to discover their efforts undermined by a secret agreement between the U.S. and Chinese governments.

Patel elision of a rock festival and a bloody ideological revealing because Avaaz simultaneously traded on a sort of dissent and blurred generational very special brand of political idealism, a combination that embodies the effort Patel. As such, he was elected "GameChanger last policy" by the Huffington Post, among

foreign policy

thinkers of the world leaders in the magazine last year named and Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos. A black belt in karate, was also named one

people

unique.

Patel acknowledges the irony of a democracy advocate mass appears as a celebrity by the rich and powerful. "The idea of ??being invited to dinner parties and receive special treatment is a danger to our model," he said. "Whenever I have to remind my boss is our membership."

Avaaz model is online mobilization, which was dismissed by some as "clicktivism" in which hundreds of thousands or even millions of people need to do nothing more than to enjoy a mouse to register their protest. The suggestion is that technology creates easily remotely offline activism, the consequences and the results seem less real. Patel is a common response to this review. "To reduce our actions by clicking a nonsense," he said. "This is what happens after a click - how to use this support - which is what causes the incredible change."

Patel believes that technology has given voice to a hunger for more democracy. Its vision is a stream of liberal thinkers worldwide struggle with the guards of the former repressive approach.

"I think everyone there is a policy of the community and connecting the voltage with a politics of fear and division," he said. "The first leads to a more deliberative in which we engage with others in a conversation about the common good and democracy less like a boxing ring with a person standing more as a table where you have the conversation that we do together. "

simultaneously inspiring Patel may seem naive, as if his idealism had very little interaction with the real world. But he is no stranger to the harsh reality, having worked in the conflict resolution in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

Patel has an interest in the overall policy of an elder brother who told him of the Cold War, when he was only three years. He was interested in history and what he calls "human experience" and, encouraged by her mother, began to dream of a organization Avaaz style at an early age.


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