Campact – The idea

Campact represents an increasingly dense network of people who intervene when political decisions are on the rocks. We make a large impact by emailing, sending faxes or making calls to vote against well organised lobby interests. Campact enables people to get politically involved even if they do not have much time because of their studies, their jobs and/or their family.

Campact – How we intervene

Citizens become part of current political debates. We give an opinion to a broad spread of political issues, just before important political decisions are made. Campact’s campaigns act as a counterbalance to the very well established lobby of pharmaceutical companies, the agrindustry and the energy industry; they make civil society's concerns visible and audible. So far, Campact's campaigns have made a stand for better climate protection, more transparency of auxiliary incomes of deputies, against the revival of nuclear power, software patents, and genetic engineering in agriculture, and for national referenda.

For example, climate change:

In June of 2007, more than 30,000 citizens made a climate appeal and called on the German Federal Government, and, in particular, for the German environment secretary, Sigmar Gabriel, to enforce stricter laws for climate protection during the German EU-board presidency. On the occasion of the meeting of the European environment secretaries in Essen, Campact handed over the list of signatures together with a small ice-block and the requests of the climate appeal to Sigmar Gabriel. Campact also built a large ice-block, 5x2 metres, with the inscription „Time to act“ along with the names of all the climate appeal signees. The melting inscription to the EU Environmental Secretaries was designed to emphasise the urgent need for speedy and forceful decisions on climate protection.

The role model - Move-On in the USA

The idea of Campact derives from the USA: There, Move-On gives an audible voice to more than 3 Million people. It all began with a campaign on Clinton's deposition proceedings in 1998. About 250,000 citizens were annoyed with stultifying discussions on private scandals and called for renewed focus on more urgent political issues: „Move on – let’s talk about politics again.” Since then they have been working on different topics. For example, on 26th February 2003 their „Virtual March on Washington“ expressed their oppostion to the Iraq War. The pictures of this march went around the World. About 400,000 phone calls and 100,000 faxes arrived at the capital and almos brought it to a standstill for one day.

13.7.2007: Campact-event against genetic engineering in agriculture

Campact – Who we are

In November 2004, Christoph Bautz and Günter Metzges started Campact as a non-profit organisation. Both had been organising political campaigns for protest movements for many years. In the meantime, the Campact-Team has increased. Three campaigners, two programmers and several interns design new campaigns and activities, and bring them to fruition. The main Campact office is situated in the Ecological Centre (Ökologisches Zentrum) in Verden near Bremen. Many campaigns and projects have been developed here, such as 'X-1000 times cross' against castor transports, the Attac network (critics of globalisation), the Bewegungsstiftung ('Movement foundation') and the campaign 'resist' against the Iraq War. There is an additional Campact office in Berlin where many contacts to cooperating organisations are maintained.

Campact's campaigns are always driven by political processes. Reacting immediatly is essential in order to be able to use political opportunities.

We aspire to make well researched campaigns and well founded claims. We back our contentious positions by working closely with specialised organisations and by consulting scientists, academics and journalists within our circle of contacts.

To date, 257.275 people have already subscribed to our newsletter and have become part of our network. Campact is funded through private donations and memberships. More than 12.000 people have already supported us with donations. The initial investments were made possible through donations by people of the 'Movement Foundation' (Bewegungsstiftung).

For further informations about Campact, please mail to
Anne Leonhardt