Social activism in virtual venues may indeed transfer to the real world.

New World Notes reports on such a transition by Second Lifer KallfuNahuel Matador, who in 2006 helped protect an SL African genocide awareness site from griefers.

Turn the clock ahead three years, however, and the flesh-and-blood man behind the Matador avatar is in the real Africa, doing backbreaking volunteer work (see pic). He told NWN's Wagner James Au:

The friends I made in the [SL] Virtual Camp Darfur are heavily involved in humanitarian activities in their first lives. Better World and Camp Darfur were extensions of their work and attempts to spread the word of the causes they stood for...

We discussed telling [their African hosts] we'd met in SL, but the idea of a virtual world where we interact but not in our own bodies? Difficult to convey...

 

[SL users should] really get to know the people you're working with in SL, research their [real-life] projects. Get to know them, talk to them, see if there's a 'fit' for you in their cause... Or, And if you aren't lucky enough to be able to travel far and wide, then find a way to help the cause locally.