But Nashulai's Maasai elders came up with an amazing plan to rise to this moment, and I knew our movement would want to help. Within days, enough money was raised to help - feeding people in need and securing the jobs of heroic rangers protecting precious wildlife. But thanks to the many donations from our wonderful movement, we didn’t stop there - the conservancy was able to help surrounding villages survive, not only distributing food but also kickstarting health programs and long term food production projects. Now the conservancy is becoming a beacon of hope for others in the crisis. I’m so proud of how we stood with Nashulai!

We shared our findings with Facebook before launching it. On the day we went public, they announced that they would alert ALL users who had engaged with harmful Covid-19 misinformation, and direct them to fact-checked corrections on the WHO website. This is the first time Facebook has EVER done that! They even publicly thanked Avaaz for helping to develop their approach. While they need to do so much more, we can all feel immensely proud of what we achieved! Also… Watch this space because we have some GROUNDBREAKING surprises on the way.

Facebook’s announcement on the day of our report release said that the company is “going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed. These messages will connect people to COVID-19 myths debunked by the WHO…” In our understanding, informed also by conversations we had with their team, this means that Facebook will show these to any user who has interacted with such harmful misinformation. Mark Zuckerberg himself said, that “Around covid we actually started rolling out a new policy, so that if you share something or directly interact with something that later gets marked as false by a fact-checker, we will then retroactively send you a notification and show a link to here’s some debunked memes.” This is a huge step in the right direction, but in order to fully live up to Avaaz’ proposal to correct the record, Facebook needs to show a) specific fact-checked corrections to b) everyone who has seen the misinformation, and do so for c) all misinformation content that is verified as false or misleading by independent fact-checkers.

Avaaz is expanding our anti-disinformation team. If you are interested, visit this link: https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/hiring/ 

Guterres publicly expressed his "deep gratitude" to us before taking the call to the powerful UN Security Council and called on world leaders to silence the guns. His team repeatedly cited our petition in its advocacy and media as evidence of public support. Many others raised their voices -- from the Pope, to Malala, to Leonardo DiCaprio. And finally, after months of negotiations, the Security Council adopted a resolution for a global ceasefire. For the first time in history!

The resolution calls on all parties involved in armed conflicts to cease fire for at least 90 consecutive days, to allow for delivery of humanitarian assistance and medical evacuations. I could not be more proud of the massive momentum our community generated at this crucial time.

As key government delegations negotiated their first joint health declaration since the pandemic hit, we placed a hard-hitting newspaper ad calling out the US administration's tactics to put patents over patients. We ran polling showing that 8 in 10 Americans want a fair distribution of vaccines, and at the end of the meeting most governments agreed to a joint declaration for universal access! A safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine will still take time, but we’ll keep fighting to make sure everyone can access it fairly as soon as it’s ready - because the virus anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.