AVALANCHE
The gloomy city of Midgar is controlled by ShinRa. ShinRa used to be a weapon manufacturating company, but eventually along comes a spider...a really really stupid and greedy spider. So, the company became corruput and they started building Mako reactors all around the world. Midgar has eight different sectors and a reactor in each. Mako reactors suck energy from the Lifestream which is kind of like where all the souls are held. It is then processed into Mako energy, which is converted into electric energy. The only problem is, this pattern will eventually destroy the planet. So, then came the resistance groups who are just trying to live. Barret will not succumb to this horrible company and knows that the only way to stop them might involve some smack down. So, Barret is the leader of the underground resistance group AVALANCHE. It is an anti-Shinra resistance and carries out many missions to stop the corrupt organization. Four years before the game started, Barret had a calm and serene life in his little coal mining town. I explained the story in my Corel section but once again, Shinra destroyed it due to Barret's actions to update to a reactor. Well, Barret still blames himself for agreeing with the constuction of the reactor and he holds a lot of grief. AVALANCHE was then founded by him in Cosmo Canyon. The original members of AVALANCHE were Barret, Jessie, Wedge and Biggs. Sadly, Barret is the only one who survied out of the original members due to sector 7 being destroyed by Shinra. Tifa joined later on and of course Cloud participated as well. His resistance group was probably the most successful even though many deaths occured. Still, many die in war even if it is won. It is just inevitable. Good work Barret, you saved the world!
IS HE ACTUALLY THE FOUNDER?
The subject of Avalanche is a bit confusing because in the English game, it is pretty much understood that Barret is not only the leader, but the founder of AVALANCHE. He even says in one point that he founded it over in Cosmo Canyon. Perhaps it was meant that the AVALANCHE seen in the game is the new AVALANCHE, of which Barret was the leader and whose base was the Seventh Heaven bar in the slums of Sector 7.
However, it's now being written that someone who participated in the Study of Planet Life in Cosmo Canyon founded AVALANCHE. Barret mentions that AVALANCHE was founded in Cosmo Canyon during the party's stop there, but what wasn't made explicitly clear to many players of the English localization, however, is that Barret was not the founder of AVALANCHE and was not its original leader.
In fact, Barret was not even a member of the original AVALANCHE. In Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, events dating back six years feature the first public appearance of AVALANCHE, with their leadership consisting of three people: Shears, a field commander, Fuhito, a research commander who had more authority than Shears, and Elfe, a young woman who supposedly served as the group's overall leader. In truth, Fuhito was using her and was the one who had obssessively dedicated himself to the Planet after researching the Study of Planet Life; he had a complete disregard for the lives of human beings, and being utterly dedicated to the Planet, wished to use a powerful summon called "Zirconiade" to eradicate all living things on the surface of the Planet so that it could have back all of its Spirit Energy, while simultaneously being free of all native threats.
So there you have it.