The image is a scan of the framed Progressive Source Communications Award certificate that we received at the Avaaz New York office today. Avaaz's Stop the Clash of Civilizations won the people's choice for Best Awareness-Raising Video.

Thanks to Progressive Source Communications and for internet voters around the world for the recognition. Props also to Agit-Pop Communications, who co-produced the video, and special thanks to DJ Spooky for providing the music.

Avaaz's video, "Stop the Clash of Civilizations," has won the people's choice for the Best Awareness-Raising Video category of the Progressive Source Awards. If you haven't watched it already, check it out on YouTube.

Thanks to everyone for voting for us!

Avaaz's 'Stop the Clash of Civilizations' video has been nominated for the Best Awareness Raising Video category of the Progressive Source Awards. Anybody with an email address can vote for us online, so check out the other entries and vote for us here.

Dear friends,

I have a quick favor to ask of you.

A short video I worked on, Avaaz.org's "Stop the Clash of Civilizations," is a finalist in an online nonprofit video competition. We need your vote to help us win. Winning the competition will help us further our mission of promoting peace talks in the Middle East and raising public awareness about the issue. Talk is rising of a 'clash of civilizations'. But the problem isn't culture, it's politics - from 9/11 to Guantanamo, Iraq to Iran. This clash is not inevitable, and we don't want it. So where to start?

Watch the video (entry number 1) and vote for us here: http://dogooder.tv/contest.aspx

You have to register before you can vote online, but it's quick and painless. Or you can vote with your cell phone by texting ntcvideo1 to 75528 (no registration necessary). Winners will be announced on April 5.

Our video is one of 6 finalists. If you have time, take a look at our competition's videos too - they are all very well-done and support good causes. All six finalists will be screened at the Nonprofit Technology Network Conference (http://www.nten.org/ntc-video) in Washington DC early April.

Thanks to everyone who has supported this project.

Things are really heating up on the Stop the Clash campaign - over 40,000 Avaaz members have now signed the petition. But it's critical that we get the number of signers as high as possible before we take it to world leaders. We need to get over
60,000 - another 20,000 - and we need to use internet tools to help reach the millions of people who agree with us, but don't know about the campaign yet.

Are you registered on Digg.com? If you're already a user then please
digg the Middle East petition page here.

If you haven't heard about Digg, it's an online chart of the best stories, sites and videos on the web. After you sign up (don't worry, you can tell them not to send you unwanted e-mails), you can then "digg" pages you like, either when someone else has added them, or because you add them yourself. You can also find out which pages are the most popular with other Diggers at the moment. So, register as a digg user and then don't forget to digg our Stop the Clash campaign!!

The Stop the Clash campaign challenges the growing belief that fundamental divides between the "West" and "Islam" (whatever they actually mean...) make conflict inevitable.

But there is nothing inevitable about this false "clash" and it's up to us to stand up for the truth. Here are some facts and figures, beginning with the ones in our video:

81% of Europeans and 87% of Americans want Middle East peace.
(Eurobarometer, Gallup) 65% of Egyptians and 74% of Jordanians want democracy. (The Great Divide: How Westerns and Muslims View Each Other; Pew Research Centre)

62% of Palestinians and 67% of Israelis want real Middle East peace talks, although each side remains deeply skeptical of the other's sincerity and commitment to genuine negotiations.

As people's fears are stirred up, there are some signs of people moving further apart. The Pew Research Centre carried out research into attitudes between Muslims, Westerners and Muslims living in Western countries. They found some opinions that were cause for concern. For example, in Nigeria, 73% of non-Muslims now see Muslims as violent, with 67% in India and 60% in Spain sharing that point of view. In the US, the number is 45%.

Muslims also see people in Western countries as violent - nearly three-quarters of Nigerian and Egyptian Muslims believe people in western countries are violent, along with 81% in Jordan and 70% in Turkey.

But there were also reasons to be optimistic, reflected in the figures quoted in our video and in other places affected by the "clash". For instance, in 2006, the number of people in Jordan viewing suicide attacks as often or sometimes justified was down nearly 30% from 57% in May 2005.

More recently, a survey carried out by Globescan had other findings about relations between Islam and the West. In 24 out of 27 countries, the majority view was that the source of tension between Islam and the West arises from "conflicts about political power and interests" - about 52% overall. Only 29% thought it was down to religious or cultural differences. 56% percent said that common ground can be found between Islam and the West. A majority believed this in 25 of 27 countries asked.

Our leaders would like us to believe that the clash between Islam and the West is a certainty. But these statistics tell a different story - that in fact, even in the places where relationships between people are strained by decades of violence and conflict, a majority still know that peace is possible and are willing to speak up for it. By signing the Avaaz petition and asking your friends and family to do the same, you can increase the pressure for peace in a way that world leaders can't ignore.

Check out 'Stop The Clash' - our new video manifesto against the so-called 'Clash of Civilizations', and for the values, the goals, and the life we share, all around the world.

Add your voice to the campaign for Real Peace Talks, share the vid around - and tell us (and each other) what you think through the comments below!

More soon - from facts and figures to backstory......

For now, if you want to post the video on your site - just like here - go to the campaign page and cut and paste the code on the middle-right of the page.

Full credit to the all-stars at Ruckus who made the video happen, to DJ Spooky for his buzzing soundtrack, over a hundred global citizens who pitched in with ideas and feedback over the last month, the creativity that went into all the pieces of the puzzle and the 30,000 of us who already joined the Real Talks campaign..........

We're still just at the start.

Avanti!