“Activate” Online Newspaper Interview With Idealist.org Founder Ami Dar

By Kate | Permalink | No Comments | May 11th, 2007 | Trackback

Ami Dar founded Action without Borders and its companion website, Idealist.org, in 1995, and it has since become one of the premiere resources for volunteers, non-profit managers – staff – and jobseekers, and people interested in social change all around the world. It has apparently welcomed no less than 40,000 organizations and a quarter million people in the time it’s been around.

Dar recently did an interview with Activate – an online magazine dedicated not just to reporting news but to connecting news items to the larger picture and actually commenting on it. Activate proposes that for Dar, Idealist.org is “…nothing short of an attempt to shift social paradigms with a little HTML.”

Dar points out that at a time in history when half the world has a cell phone, people today have a remarkable opportunity to connect, across geographic and even ideological borders.

The challenge is to take that opportunity and make something happen. Idealist.org – aside from functioning as a meeting point for people from all over the world - recently took action towards encouraging local communities to connect by organizing start-up meetings: gatherings of people interested in making a change. More than 400 meetings were held in over 70 countries, and follow up meetings continue.

In Dar’s own words, “Getting involved and finding a way should be as easy as buying a carton of milk. You know where to go and buy milk: at the supermarket. We all have the means to get involved. Starting should be easy and finding all the other people should be easy…”

The interviewer noted that Dar had fought in the 1982 Israeli – Lebanese war, and asked if he considered himself a peace activist.

“I think in the broader sense, yes, I see myself as wanting more peace in the world. I don’t have any illusions that there can be a world with no violence. But I am driven by the fact that the there is too much violence. There are people who make it their business to divide the world and there is not enough of a global force pushing back. The extremists are good at yelling, but the moderates don’t get up and fight.”

Check out Idealist.org for yourself (or the Volunteer Logue’s profile of it), and also have a look at the summer internships Idealist is recruiting for right now.

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