Up to 60 million Africans will move to Europe by 2030 if land degradation continues, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) warned the fifth Caux Dialogue on Land and Security (CDLS). Dr Pradeep Monga was speaking at the opening of the dialogue, which was co-organized by Initiatives on Land, Lives and Peace (ILLP), the CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation, the UNCCD and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and ran from 11-15 July, 2017.

Up to 60 per cent of the world’s conflicts are driven by disputes over natural resources, said Dr Monga. He spoke of the importance of land restoration for the environment, peace-building, communities and businesses around the world. ‘We need to build trust,’ he said. ‘It is important to have all the stakeholders around the same table first.’   

Zimbabwe’s prosperity will depend on sustainable land management, stated Zimbabwean Environment Minister, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri. Part of the country’s military budget already goes to tree planting.

This year’s CDLS focused on the role of business, and was divided into in three parallel streams: restoration, business, and peace and governance.

Land degradation is accelerating despite solemn international commitments, and affects some of the land we most depend on to feed the world. Yet the restoration stream finished on a note of optimism, as Rosemary Namatsi and John D Liu shared stories of regeneration from Africa and Asia.

Participants agreed that the technical aspects of land restoration are simpler than creating the social and political conditions they require. Among the topics discussed were Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and the importance of holistic management for locking carbon in the soil (addressed by Seth Itzkhan) and conserving grazing lands and water (reviewed by Judith Schwartz). Renald Flores gave a moving account of his journey from hedge fund manager to soil restoration consultant.

In the business stream Sofia Faruqi from the World Resources Institute (WRI) outlined the challenges of engaging private capital in restoration projects. Simeon Max from FairVentures Worldwide gave examples of farmer-driven social forestry in Borneo and Alan Laubsch of Lykke Wallet presented innovative ways of funding restoration.  Dr Mervat Abdel-Nasser described the creation of the New Hermopolis ecological complex in Egypt.

Oliver Gardner from Regeneration International spoke of the potential of Commonwealth countries in reversing climate change, while Dr Bremley Lyngdoh described World View’s large-scale mangrove restoration projects in Myanmar. Dorn Cox introduced Farm OS – a website for the exchange of farming knowledge. David Plattner and John DeBenedette from the Rain Trust launched a crowdfunding platform for forest restoration. The stream closed with a panel on linking private capital to land restoration projects, featuring Willem Ferwerda, CEO of CommonLand, David Jackson of the UN Capital Development Fund and the former IUCN Director General, Julia Marton-Lefèvre.  

In the peace and governance stream, Yousif el Tayeb, Executive Director of the Darfur Development and Reconstruction Agency, spoke of the interrelated challenges of land degradation and urbanization in Sudan. The founder of Greenhorns, Severine von Tscharner Fleming, explored how young farmers can access land at a time when most farmland is devoted to large scale production. Dr Muhammad Swazuri, Chairman of the Kenyan National Land Commission gave an overview of the causes of land conflicts in Kenya and of alternative approaches to resolving disputes.

CDLS 2017 saw the continuation of the Emerging Leaders mentoring programme, which offers a platform for introducing new technologies. There was also a report on the progress of the Kenyan Dialogue on Land and Security over the past two years and the next dialogue in Kenya was announced.

The founder of 4Girls GLocal Leadership (4GGL), Jin In is an activist and feminist, who has worked over a lifetime with the US Government, UN agencies and in collaboration with numerous organizations. She was one of the main speakers at the 2017 Caux Dialogue on Land and Security. According to her, young girls’ and women’s empowerment represents ‘a humanitarian issue, critical in every concern, every problem and every crisis on this planet’. She underlines the importance of it towards sustainable long term peace-building.

While the Caux Forum, through its series of events, trainings and workshops, promotes a global change through personal change, In applies a similar approach in her social change movement, called Glocal. On the one hand, she seeks to impact the root causes of women suffering at a global level in a responsive way, and on the other, she highlights and generates the power of girls at a local level: ‘That means think globally and have a global mindset, but [with] local actions. And the need of change must come from within.’

According to In, leadership is also about influencing other people, being able to raise one’s voice to spread a message. In that sense, the impact of an empowered woman goes beyond individual change, and has a broader impact: ‘I really believe if you empower a girl, she is never going to stop in her life. She will impact her family, her community, and in fact the change is also intergenerational. She is not only impacting her children but also her parents.’

‘I want to tell anyone who is addressing sustainable development, peace and security, land rights and especially war and peace, that it is not possible if we do not invest in women and girls, and if we do not empower them to be active agents of change.’

For her, progress regarding young girls and women empowerment has been happening at a very slow pace and has not been effective enough in the past. ‘I realise how important it is for people to see numbers, proofs.’ This motivated her to start collecting data measuring women’s empowerment, in order to understand better the needs and issues of women around the world. Questions include asking them the most important issues to them and women in their society. ‘Now we have proof, we have reports and we have data. So, who is going to challenge us? We have numbers,’ she explains, convinced that numbers have a powerful effect in raising awareness about gender inequalities and women’s suffering.

During the 2017 Caux Forum the issue of gender equality has been addressed from different angles and In’s strong message was a captivating and inspiring call to action towards girls’ and women’s empowerment.

Four years ago, she was the first girl to ride a bicycle in her neighborhood, in Kabul. Now, she is a 21-year-old championing the empowerment of young girls in Afghanistan. Sahar Fetrat was one of 20 participants in this year’s Caux Scholars Program (CSP), which ran for four weeks during the Caux Forum. CSP is an intensive training course on conflict analysis, transformation and resolution which aims to equip participants for resolving conflicts in their communities.

Sahar is not only a student. She is also a journalist and the founder of a documentary film company. She defines herself as an activist for women’s rights who believes in the power of storytelling. Most of her work involves advocacy and awareness about social issues affecting women, using videos to educate people in her country.

Like most Afghan girls, she experienced sexism, discrimination and harassment when she was young. ‘My family always felt concerned about women’s rights. My sister always told me about how women should claim their existence and go to places they were not allowed to go to,’ Sahar told me.

A big part of her inspiration also comes from her mother. ‘She was a feminist without knowing it. She taught us equality and never preferred our brother over us. She supported me in her limited way,’ Sahar explains.

She was 14 when she discovered the idea of feminism. She felt unequal that only boys could talk in front of the class, so she challenged it. ‘The teacher called me an angry feminist. I went to find the meaning of it and I loved the idea of being a feminist,’ Sahar says.

Every time she held a camera, she felt empowered to confront the men who would harass her by saying: ‘You will see yourself on the TV.` She has sparked debate and discussion among the media over the issue of women being harassed on the streets in their everyday life in Afghanistan.

That was how she was inspired to start her own production company. It aims to provide a safe platform for women to express their issues and get empowered through learning new technical filming skills that are usually reserved for men.

She is trying to break the stereotype that people who live outside the West don’t know about feminism. ‘I feel the responsibility to explain to people what feminism means to me, but I also feel that it’s time for people to educate themselves about it,’ Sahar says. 

‘People always claim that our biggest problem is being oppressed by the burqa. But Afghan women’s problem is not the burqa; our freedom is not measured by how long our skirts are. The challenges that we have are just about claiming existence,’ she adds.

Sahar hopes to spread her message and inspire other participants of the Caux Scholars Program to take action in creating a ‘global sisterhood network’ where girls can support each other. ‘At first when I started riding a bicycle in Kabul, people harassed me. But now girls ride bicycles with confidence. That’s a lot of hope,’ she says. ‘I feel that there is a strength. I believe in female power; the future will be better for young women,’ she concludes.

After months of careful planning and hard work, the big moment finally arrived. Towards an Inclusive Peace, a new event of the Caux Forum, was launched on 23 July with some 100 people from 39 countries gathered for the opening session.

Participants were greeted by Barbara Hintermann, Secretary General of the CAUX-IofC Foundation, and Kate Monkhouse, member of the TIP organizing team. They highlighted IofC’s long tradition of peacebuilding and the central role that Caux has played in it.

Ms Hintermann described TIP as a much-needed and timely addition to the Caux Forum’s line-up of events, since its goal was to look at violent extremism in its broadest sense. The forum would address the social, economic and cultural roots of extremism and look for solutions which could create a just and sustainable peace.

The keynote address was given by Fatima Zaman from Extremely Together, a youth programme of the Kofi Annan Foundation. A passionate activist against violent extremism activist from the UK, she began by describing how she witnessed the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London.

Since then, her driving force had been to challenge extremist propaganda and deliver a positive narrative in schools and beyond.. She said that violent extremists were fed on a narrative of hate and weaponization, together with a romanticized image of their role in fighting injustice.

Fatima Zaman challenged her own generation, the millennials, to counter this narrative with one of love and inclusion. She also called on the military, government and civil society organizations to work together, using a more coherent approach. She concluded that sending a message of peace and hope to counter isolation and pent-up frustration was far more effective than military strategies.

Participants left the meeting with a sense of excitement and anticipation. 

‘For anyone taking human security seriously, it’s a vital necessity to oppose and reject the inevitability of war,’ said Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General for UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works agency for Palestinian Refugees) at the opening of the fifth annual Just Governance for Human Security conference. ‘Without the recognition of individual pain, there is no healing,’ he continued. ‘There is no addressing the extremes, there is no diffusing the hatreds of tomorrow.’

Over five days, 250 participants from 55 countries convened at the Caux Palace in Caux, Switzerland, to address extremes of all kinds. They included diplomats, NGO representatives, business leaders, academics and citizens concerned with human security. The event took a holistic approach to human security, focusing on its six pillars: good governance, sustainable living, inclusive economics, care for refugees, healing memory and food security.

 ‘The only way to solve hate and violence is with compassion and empathy,’ said former white supremacist turned peace activist Christian Picciolini, one of the panellists in the plenary on the roots of extremism and violence. He described how he was recruited in 1987 by a white supremacist who gave him the ‘promise of a future, of something powerful when [he] was powerless’. His fellow panellists  –  Paul Turner, expert in Countering Violent Extremisms, former extremist Ziad (Fouad) Saab and Carol Mottet of the  Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs – agreed that collective action and dialogue are needed to fight violence and build resilience.

Participants had the opportunity to continue the discussion in dynamic workshops on such themes as food security, inclusive finance, refugees and environmental threats. People from different parts of Ukraine and Eastern Europe met in dialogue, as did Turks, Armenians and Kurds. Another dialogue focused on race and healing in Tulsa, USA and yet another on the ‘people’s money movement’. Training was offered on migrants and refugees as rebuilders, on negotiation approaches and on combating violent extremism.

Every morning, participants had the chance to hear the inspiring story of a courageous peacebuilder.  ‘We need to embrace this culture of forgiveness to break the cycle of violence’, said Rwandan singer-songwriter Jean Paul Samputu, as he told how he publicly forgave the man who had killed his family. Letlapa Mphahlele, former director of operations of the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army during apartheid in South Africa, reminded the audience that ‘the best gift a human being can give another human being is forgiveness’. American Shalisa Hayes described how, after losing her teenage son to gun violence, she founded the Billy Ray Shirley III Foundation, through which she  works to provide young people with opportunities and alternatives to violence.

2017 also saw the launch of humansecurityX, a parallel training course which offered an in-depth exploration of the six pillars of human security. As he handed out certificates to forty graduates from over fifteen countries, David Chikvaidze, Chef de Cabinet of the Director General at the UN Office at Geneva, said: ‘In the pursuit of human security, we as citizens, activists and leaders all have a role to play. This is why programmes such as the Caux Forum and humansecurityX are so important. They provide the knowledge, skills and cross-sectoral connections needed to fuel citizen engagement.’

As the event came to a close, participants took on a 90-day challenge to bring what they had learned in Caux back to their communities. One such initiative started on the last day of the conference, when 60 per cent of the conference participants pledged not to purchase any plastic for 30 days.

In business, it’s the very small, seemingly inconsequential, steps that have the greatest potential to lead to unethical business practices. The intense pressure in today’s work environment pushes many employees to ‘get the job done’ rather than caring about ‘how the job is done’. At a time when extreme challenges are posed by our interconnected, complex and globalized world, the ethical conduct of an organization and its employees is more important than ever, as stakeholders expect irreproachable business behaviour.

The Caux Forum Ethical Leadership in Business retreat-conference which took place from 29 June to 2 July aimed to offer a range of answers to the question: how to lead business in times of extremes? 56 business executives, academics and social entrepreneurs from 21 countries, gathered in Caux, Switzerland, to take part in this new event, hosted by the CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation and its partners.

During the three-day event, they had the opportunity to share experiences, exchange views and inspire each other. They were able to reflect on their understanding of ethics and to deepen their listening and trust building skills. The multisectorial nature of the event allowed them to enhance their professional networks and expand their contacts beyond the traditional business silo. ‘Foster ethical leadership’ was their call to action.

Participants and speakers acknowledged that value-based decisions and actions are vital if businesses are to be credible and sustainable in the long run. In the opening plenary, Sabine Döbeli, CEO of Swiss Sustainable Finance, stressed the importance of responsible decision-making in business and the positive impact of values on the economy.  

Guido Palazzo, Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Lausanne, delivered a workshop on why good managers make unethical decisions. ‘The most important thing to do in order to become a good leader is to know yourself, which means understanding what values you stand for,’ he said and pointed out that everybody should have a daily moment of silence or meditation in order to connect to these values.

Andreas Bomann-Larsen, CEO and founder of the Norwegian investment firm, CARN Capital, affirmed that companies must focus on their core values and core purpose. One of the main components of their set of values, he maintained, should be trust towards all players.

Many examples of ethical business models and value-based decision-making were shared, equipping participants with clearer guidelines to follow as they returned to their own contexts. One subject discussed was the role of business in advancing the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to ‘end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all’ over the next 15 years.

Antonio Hautle, from the Global Compact Network in Switzerland, described the SDGS as a unique business opportunity. He said that businesses, together with governments and civil society, are called to be drivers of change towards a more sustainable world.

The event was part of a broader programme run by the CAUX-IofC Foundation in Switzerland, aimed at promoting ethical leadership in business and organizations.

• Find all the plenary sessions, interviews and highlight videos of Ethical Leadership in Business on our Facebook page.
• Read more about the Official Opening of the Caux Forum 2017.
• Check out Ethical Leadership in Business in pictures and tweets

Senior representatives of governments, parliaments, international organisations, financiers, business, NGOs and media from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas met on July 11-13 at the Caux Palace Conference Centre - which has a 70 year history of building trust and achieving reconciliation, starting with relations between France and Germany after the Second World War - to commit to transformative action to scale up restoration of the world's more than two billion hectares of degraded land and achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.

They emphasised the imperative of going beyond sustainability to recover land at scale, for the sake both of its people and of the planet. This is a matter of justice and security. Already about half the world's conflicts in fragile regions and economies stem from battles for resources resulting from environmental degradation, and are often rooted in unjust distributions of land and wealth which began under colonialism but were continued after independence. Loss of productive land and livelihoods – exacerbated by climate change, desertification and population growth – are major drivers of forced migration, which is expected to increase many times over in the coming decades. The area affected by drought since the 1970s has doubled.

Returning the land to ecological productivity increases resources and promotes peace. It is also central to implementing the universally agreed Sustainable Development Goals and to enabling countries to fulfill their pledges under the Paris Agreement. The need and the opportunity are both massive, as is the action required. Much can be done with simple, known, labour-intensive techniques: the most difficult issues are social and financial. Clearly communicating the challenges and opportunities of restoration is a precondition of success.

The Caux Dialogue on Land and Security calls on leaders and stakeholders at all levels to:

1. Address the urgent need for systems change - including in governance, investment, employment and conflict prevention and resolution - rather than incremental improvement. This transformation should target reshaping the context of investment in agriculture, not least in providing incentives for farmers to remove carbon from the atmosphere by restoring and afforesting land;

2. Focus action on local communities and landscapes, where much knowledge on managing land exists and where partnerships for change can be forged. It is also here that conflicts are often triggered - and can be prevented or resolved;

3. Give less emphasis to top-down 'capacity building' - often involving the wrong people and places – than to strengthening the capacity of those working on the ground, working in situ and meeting the needs of those directly affected by land degradation, who recognise the importance of restoration.

4. Include women and youth - who are critical agents of change – in all sustainable actions. These should promote leadership and build bridges between local people and policy-makers by tackling gender inequalities that hinder women’s effective engagement and action and by designing land-based jobs that tap into youth's large labour reserve.

5. Increase resilience to drought by strengthening early warning systems, enhancing assessments of vulnerability and impacts and institutionalising preparedness for drought so as to commit countries to effective policies, investment and risk mitigation.  

6. Realise the enormous investment opportunity – with extra returns beyond the purely financial – represented by land restoration, something which businesses and financial institutions are failing to do. Public finance is needed, not only to de-risk investments and bring successful initiatives to scale, but more especially to reward the global services of small farmers who nourish their soils in combating climate change, conserving biodiversity, enhancing food security and water supplies and increasing security.

7. Meet the large finance gap with more private investment. This in turn implies scalable business models that can deliver financial and environmental returns. Public money – including climate finance – is needed to encourage entrepreneurship and the development of new technologies. Public-private partnerships, which can be central, must involve local people and local and central government and expect returns in the medium to long term. Restoration bonds, or similar financial instruments, will be an essential part of the mix to tip the financial equation in favour of investment with transparently measureable ecological benefits.

We owe it to present and future generations to undertake this agenda speedily and at the required scale.

‘We are the first generation who can decide to be the last one’

‘We are the first generation who can decide to be the last generation,’ Kate Gilmore, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, told guests from all over the world at the Official Opening of the Caux Forum 2017 on 30 June. In spite of progress with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), inequality had become ‘worse, deeper and broader’. She believed that the war on terror had prevented the world from dealing with the human rights issues, which were fundamental to a sustainable future.

‘It is not sustainable that the few should have privilege and the many have despair,’ Gilmore continued. She called on humanity to ‘live generously, in empathy and connectively’ in order to bring peace and reduce inequalities in an interdependent world.

The Official Opening of the Caux Forum 2017 set the tone for the events of the summer, by exploring the links between inequalities and extremism. The event was introduced by the Mayor of Montreux, Laurent Wehrli, and Antoine Jaulmes, President of the CAUX-IofC Foundation. Then participants heard from two speakers, a refugee and a survivor of a terrorist attack, who had firsthand experiences of extremism in a storytelling session moderated by Barbara Hintermann, Secretary General of CAUX-IofC.

‘I didn’t have a destination.’

When Hasan Hawar started university in Damascus, Syria, he never imagined that war would lead him to leave his studies, home and family to seek refuge in Turkey. He found himself on his own in a country where he didn’t speak the language, had no income and had ‘lost trust in everybody’, and decided to move on. ‘I didn’t have a destination,’ he said. ‘I just wanted a safe place, a place to start living again’ After a difficult journey, Hawar was granted asylum in Switzerland where he was able to finish his studies. Now, he said, his dream was to be reunited with his family, still in Syria, whom he hasn’t seen for five years.

‘We are all the result of the stories we believe to be true about ourselves’

Bjørn Ihler described his experiences on the Norwegian island of Utøya in 2011, when a far right extremist killed 69 young Labour Party members taking part in a summer camp to ‘make Norway a better community’. When Anders Breivik pointed his gun at him, Ihler did not think he would live beyond the age of 20. Surviving the attack led him to question what made someone who had a similar biography to him commit such a violent act. Unlike Ihler, who grew up believing in coexisting in diversity peacefully, Breivik isolated himself from the communities surrounding him and believed that they were a threat to his identity. ‘We are all the result of the stories we believe to be true about ourselves,’ Ihler explained. ‘Extremism is not linked to any particular religion and ideology and we often forget that extremes grow out of every community’. Now part of the Kofi Annan Foundation’s Extremely Together initiative, Ihler aims to bring people from different communities together and to spread the word that ‘my identity is not a threat to your identity’. He noted that he and Hawar were united by their ‘strong power to live on and to fight for the world to be better’. 

Are inequalities fueling extremisms?

 The stories of Hawar and Ihler were followed by a panel discussion on the links between inequality and extremism facilitated by Eric Marclay, Executive-in-Residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP). In addition to Kate Gilmore, the panelists were Raphaël Nägeli from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and Ramiro Santa, Director of Integral Responsibility at OCENSA. Ms Gilmore pointed out that extremists feed off of despair and poverty, mobilizing the masses by emphasizing their helplessness in the face of the unbalanced distribution of opportunity and material privilege, and suggesting that someone else is to blame.

Nägeli reminded the audience that ‘inequality has always existed and we have to find a way to cope with it’. An inclusive peace process must reach out to everyone, including terrorists, he maintained. Respect for human rights should be at the basis of any peace agreement: there was significant evidence of violent extremisms in repressive societies where human rights are not respected. He took a pragmatic approach, acknowledging that states had national interests and that it was important to be honest and self-critical. From a governmental perspective, he believed that building bridges lay at the heart of the solution, but that these bridges – whether narrow or wide – needed to be controlled. 

Ramiro Santa spoke from the point of view of the private sector. He maintained that the role of business in fighting against inequality was to ensure transparency, generate possibilities and to educate communities about their rights. In Colombia, over 50 years of war had led to the exclusion of many remote communities. One way of becoming more inclusive, he said, was to provide women with opportunities, as they were the most effective way to reach out to their communities.

‘Be in dialogue with your great great grandchildren’

In a world where the population is larger and younger than ever before, Kate Gilmore said, ‘Fear, privilege, anxiety is old and aging. Despair, poverty, hopelessness has never been younger.’ Wars in Yemen, South Sudan or in the Central African Republic were childrens’ wars. Against this backdrop, what could be done to engage the young generation in decisions? For Ms Gilmore, one of the answers was to generate intergenerational dialogue to ‘transfer opportunity, wealth and participation’ to future generations.

Intergenerational dialogue and youth empowerment is a central part of the Caux Forum through its many training programmes. ‘Initiatives of Change encourages leaders to commit themselves to tolerance and to ethical principles and high standards,’ concluded Cornelio Sommaruga, Honorary President of the International Association of IofC. ‘Academic discussions are not enough, we must all work for action.’

·  Missed the Official Opening? Check out our video footage on our Facebook account here

·  More information about the Caux Forum here

Photos: Jonty Herman

Photo Jonty Herman: Michèle Bächtold-Goetze and Sonia Hauser performing Lieder composed by Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss. 

Gwendoline and Azain Raban, an Australian-Sri Lankan couple based in Melbourne, decided to step up to the environmental and sustainable challenges in their local community. Their contribution is simple: pairing up people with innovative ideas, but without the resources, knowledge and network to implement them, with experienced and well-connected professionals, who can help bring them into fruition.

The couple, who have a background in these fields, launched the Sustainable Impact Mentoring Programme after attending the 2016 Caux Dialogue on Land and Security, part of the Caux Forum which takes place every summer in Caux, Switzerland.

‘Caux really provides a unique experience,’ Gwendoline explained to us during an interview. ‘There is an atmosphere of trust, dialogue, sharing and community, which is beneficial for anyone who attends.’ They were particularly inspired by the Emerging Leaders Programme, a mentoring element of the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security.

The four-month mentoring programme Gwendoline and Azain have helped establish and run at Initiatives of Change Australia, is all about exchanging stories and experiences, as happens in Caux. Six participants have been selected after a competitive process, in which each presented their own idea.

The ideas being incubated include transforming solar energy technologies, creating collaborative spaces to link sustainable businesses, encouraging people to stop using plastic bags, raising awareness through the arts, developing a means of electronically mapping the underground sewerage system in Victoria, Australia to make maintenance more sustainable and reduce environmental pollution from leakages, and alerting the younger generation to their responsibility for small-scale environmental change.

People may have an idea, but they don’t know how to develop it into a project - Azain Raban

‘We want to empower individuals, who have good ideas and want to create positive impact, but still do not have the means of doing it by themselves and are in need of advice from experienced professionals,’ said Azain.

Through a series of workshops and one-to-one mentoring sessions, participants are helped to consolidate their ideas as part of a collective effort which includes stakeholders and beneficiaries. Gwendoline pointed out that project design is ‘about looking at what end-users need and not about what you think what people may need’.

‘Our vision is to grow this programme in Australia and expand it to Asia Pacific,’ added Azain. They also want to inspire others to create similar platforms in their own countries. ‘Since Initiatives of Change is all about being a changemaker,’ said Gwendoline, ‘maybe the impact will grow and we will meet people in Caux who want to apply it somewhere else in the world. It’s all about exchanging ideas, learnings and visions. You never know what can happen just by people coming together with some ideas.’

The proponents of the best developed ideas within the Sustainable Impact Mentoring Programme will participate in this summer’s Caux Dialogue on Land and Security from 11 to 15 July.

To learn more about this and other events taking place during the Caux Forum this year, visit www.caux.ch

Around 40 people gathered in the UN library on 4 May 2017 to participate in the latest edition of CAUX-Initiatives of Change Foundation’s (CAUX-IofC) human library on ‘Youth Breaking Barriers of Exclusion’. This was CAUX-IofC’s third collaboration with the UN library as part of its Enriching Encounters series.

“Give young leaders a voice”

Barbara Hintermann, Secretary General of CAUX-IofC reminded the audience of the importance to involve young leaders and give them a voice as “the young generation is the world’s future and strongest resource”. CAUX-IofC aimed to do just that by providing a space for young leaders to tell the inspiring stories of how they turned their concerns and ideas into constructive action.

Readers were invited to choose from a range of young human books with stories of self-initiated projects aiming to build bridges within their communities and take steps towards inclusive change.

Salome Schmid and Flore Portmann were aiming to break barriers of exclusion in Switzerland when they co-founded La Red, a house in Fribourg which aims to enhance contact between people of different cultural backgrounds and to foster exchanges at eye-level. When the young founders of La Red had the idea to create this intercultural space, they didn’t know each other at first. This proved to be a real strength, as it allowed them to expand their network and reach out to a diverse community. The house and the activities on offer are now entirely self-managed by young volunteers.

Another successful story of intercultural exchange is the one of Sprachcafé Basel, an organization which invites people to practice German for greater integration in a café in Basel. As a German teacher, co-founder Anita Ruggiero is convinced that speaking the language is the first step towards integration. Together with Jessica Eggeschwiler, they had the idea of creating an open space for language exchange and made it happen. Every week, the Sprachcafé welcomes newcomers, refugees, expats and locals in a laid-back atmosphere for meaningful exchanges, games or light conversation.

“I needed to understand why someone wanted to kill me, how someone who grew up similarly to me ended up being so different to me”

After surviving the 2011 terrorist attacks on Utøya island in Norway, Bjørn Ihler was determined to study and understand how perpetrator Anders Breivik became a terrorist. Often depicted in the media as a monster, the man Bjørn saw in court turned out to be “just another human being, not so different from myself”. This led him to realize that all extremists have their humanity and that for him to move on, he needed to “reconcile with the past and accept what had happened”. He now focuses on deconstructing the victimhood narrative, in which violent extremists believe their identity is threatened by others and feel this position of victimhood justifies violent action. To counter these extremist narratives, there is a need to empower people, value their humanity and “give them a sense of value, a positive identity teaching them means other than violence for their agenda’. Bjørn Ihler is now a member of the Kofi Annan Foundation’s Extremely Together, a group of ten young leaders active in preventing and countering violent extremism. He is also the co-founder of Omelas, a company using technology to challenge extremists.

Bjørn believes in storytelling as a tool to make a change. “The stories we believe in shape how we perceive the world, how we behave. By changing these stories, we can change lives.” Storytelling is central to CAUX-IofC’s approach and Bjørn Ihler will be sharing his story at the Official Opening of the Caux Forum on 30 June 2017, a public event exploring the links between inequalities and extremisms.

“Determination and commitment”

It all started when four young people concerned with the social economic integration of refugees in Geneva put their heads together and secured seed funding to implement their innovative project. Their idea: organize a reverse job fair, where refugees could share their skills and professional background with potential employers. A conference on the integration of refugees and an online job portal connecting refugees and employers soon followed. This is how THRIVE (Towards Holistic Refugee Integration through Valuable Engagement) was created.

The road wasn’t always easy, explained THRIVE coordinators Lisa Godde and Abdullatif Alabdullah, but with determination the young team overcame challenges such as building a network from scratch, securing funding and juggling internships and studies on the side. There are now 40 volunteers at THRIVE, 6 refugees have found job opportunities through the platform and the network is expanding.

The human books had plenty of tips for those who want to initiate a social project: Apply for funding as much as you can to secure financial support, be determined and committed, motivate each other, learn from your mistakes and be flexible as not everything will go according to your initial plan.

After sharing with each other the compelling stories of change they had just heard, participants summed up how they felt after the human library in one word: inspired. “I have learned about different ways to implement change and how important it is to make local connections”, said a participant. “It is up to the civil society to fill the gap. And this has inspired me to do just that”.

Missed the human library? Get inspired this summer at the Caux Forum! The Caux Forum is an inspirational platform aiming to develop the human potential for global change through its main events, training programmes and dialogues.