When Tunisian economics graduate Wael Boubaker joined the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme (CPLP) in 2018, he expected a conference which would look good on his CV, and some beautiful scenery. Instead, his time at Caux overturned his approach to life and launched him on a career in climate activism. He has spent the last year in Finland, working with EKOenergy to promote sustainable forms of energy, and is now embarking on a Masters in sustainable development.

Wael’s environmental awakening took place during a session at Caux on Food Security, where he watched the speech to the UN of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. He saw how ‘climate change is affecting our peace, our existence as humans, our human rights’ and returned to Tunisia determined to make a difference. 

Caux didn’t just give Wael a cause, but a new way of living. He describes his experience there as spiritual. As part of the CPLP, he worked in the housekeeping team: ‘I found myself helping people.’

And he found himself listening. ‘Before, I was just talking,’ he says. ‘When I had a debate about human rights or democracy, I just wanted to share my ideas.’ As CPLP participants from all over the world shared their stories, he learnt to listen deeply.

‘When my friend from Nepal told his story, I started crying because he touched my heart so deeply. An Egyptian friend told me something he had never told anyone else. Caux gives us a place where we can share our emotions and our ideas without anxiety or fear.’

As he listened, he began to let go of his predjudices. ‘When I got home I apologized to someone we had bullied at school because he was different.’

He learnt too to speak more carefully: to say things in a way which did not hurt other people. ‘My whole worldview has completely changed: my way of thinking, my relationship with my friends, my view of society. The Caux Peace and Leadership Programme gave me the tools to be more engaged.’

In Caux I learnt that I must be the change I want to see, so I have made my lifestyle more sustainable.

Small changes push big changes, Wael believes. ‘In Caux, they don’t waste food. Everything matters. I stopped smoking and using plastic bags, I buy second hand. In Caux I learnt that I must be the change I want to see, so I have made my lifestyle more sustainable.’

In November 2021, Wael was a youth delegate to the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, whose theme was ‘Can democracy save the environment?’

Now back home, he is deciding whether to return to Finland – rated second in the world for sustainable living – or stay to raise awareness in Tunisia. ‘Most Tunisians don't care about climate change,’ he says. ‘They think the political and economic situation is more important. I am working hard to educate people. Climate change should be the top top top priority for all governments.’

Quiet time is really important to me: all my big decisions in the last four years have come from it.

In making the decision, he will turn to another of the tools he learnt in Caux – taking time in quiet to reflect. ‘I discover many things in my personality, what is wrong or useful that I have done, what I need to change in my life. Every morning I have 30 minutes. Sometimes, I spend hours in silence. Quiet time is really important to me: all my big decisions in the last four years have come from it.’

Watch Wael speak about his work at EKOenergy

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo CPLP group 2018 and with 2 CPLP participants serving cakes: Initiatives of Change
• All other photos: Wael Broubaker

Tanaka Mhunduru from Zimbabwe is one of the organizers of the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme (CPLP), a one-month programme for young people from around the world. He first took part in 2017:

Growing up, I had always heard about this mystical, magical place in Switzerland called Caux. My parents were part of Initiatives of Change (IofC) in Zimbabwe and had visited Caux a few times. Going there always felt like a dream, something I did not think I could achieve.

In 2017 I was accepted onto the CPLP. Finally I was going to have this amazing experience I had been told so much about. Not only would it be my first time in Switzerland but it would be my first time off the African continent. I did not know what to expect. I went from being excited to being a little anxious about whether or not I would fit in and get along with everyone.

I was still concerned when I got on the train up the mountain, which was a shame because I missed the beautiful view. All that worry was laid to rest when the train doors opened and I was greeted by a beaming smile from Phoebe Gill, the manager of the CPLP. She said ‘Welcome home!’ and suddenly everything was right with the world. Home – that word let me know that I was safe, that I could relax and be myself in this foreign land. I began to admire the beauty all around me, the scenery, the sweet aroma of natural mountain air.

She said ‘Welcome home!’ and suddenly everything was right with the world.

Although my parents had told me about the Caux Palace, nothing could have prepared me for the moment I set eyes on it. This place was special. I saw people from all over the world conversing and breaking bread peacefully and with respect, as if all of the animosity and unrest of the world had been locked out of this place.

I discovered that Caux is the perfect environment for people to experience peace, forgiveness and healing. I experienced all these things while on the CPLP: the programme changed my life.

Caux is the perfect environment for people to experience peace, forgiveness and healing.

The CPLP not only explores the concept of leadership and peace, but also gives participants a chance to practise these values through service around the conference centre. It challenged my view of leadership: I had to search myself to discover my purpose and what I have to offer. It made me want to be a leader with integrity, aspiring to live by absolute values of honesty, purity, love and unselfishness.

One evening I had a chance encounter with a practising Muslim and an atheist. I am a Christian and had never before spoken to someone from the Islamic faith. The three of us spoke for hours about our beliefs, our opinions, our upbringing and so much more. Then something incredible happened: after we finished our conversation we shook hands and embraced.

I did not know it was possible to have such a healthy conversation over such a contentious issue. I found that it was common in Caux for people to speak freely with each other, with the intention of learning and understanding. This was a safe place.

The month in Caux flew by and before I knew it I was back home with a new sense of purpose. I had experienced something so magical it did not seem real. I guess it was a case of right place, right time.  

I am passionate about empowering young people. I have been passing on what I learnt at Caux through youth work at my church. I find great support from the CPLP alumni.  Since 2018, I’ve been involved in the planning and delivery of the CPLP, and in such projects as the Mandela Mile Leadership Programme and the CPLP Talks.

It challenged my view of leadership: I had to search myself to discover my purpose and what I have to offer. It made me want to be a leader with integrity.

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photos top (with Rainer Gude) and study time: Tanaka Mhunduru
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change

The Winter Gathering of 2016 was a special experience for Diana Damsa – not just because she experienced Caux in winter, but also because, for the first time in eight years, she had no responsibilities behind the scenes. ‘I was able to step back and enjoy, rather than run around like crazy and sort out situations,’ she says.

The memory stands out for another reason, too. Diana first met Initiatives of Change (IofC) through a Foundations for Freedom (F4F) course in her home country, Romania, in 2004. Two of the trainers were a Dutch couple, Kees and Marina Scheijgrond. ‘They have always been special people in my heart, because they opened the door for me into a new world,’ she says.

The Scheijgronds came to Caux in December 2016 with all their adult children and their families. ‘Kees was already ill,’ says Diana, ‘and in March 2017 he passed away. It was my last opportunity to talk with him, and to meet his family.’

In April 2004, when she attended F4F, Diana was a young law graduate, disillusioned by her experience of the corporate workplace. She could not accept the gossip and corruption she encountered there and was easing herself into a new career as a music teacher.

‘I came from a society which had experienced a totalitarian regime. There was no encouragement to think for yourself, express yourself or ask questions. At F4F, big questions were asked: Who am I? What can I contribute to society and the world? We were encouraged to think and express ourselves and whatever we said, the reaction was appreciative. It made me feel I counted and could contribute. I felt it was what my country needed.’

What can I contribute to society and the world?

That summer, Diana went to Caux for the first time. The experience was overwhelming. ‘My English was workable but not good – by the end of each day I had a headache.’ She can’t remember anything about the conference she attended, but she was struck by people’s kindness, openness and diversity.

I wasn’t just part of the crowd, I was someone to be cared for.

When one woman discovered that Diana’s bus journey home would take 40 hours, she gave her a neck support cushion, to make her trip more bearable. ‘It was so moving for me. I wasn’t just part of the crowd, I was someone to be cared for.’

Eager to discover more, Diana signed up for Action for Life, an intensive nine-month programme of IofC training, which took her to Asia – and taught her more, she says, than 18 years of formal education. She spent 2007 volunteering with IofC in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

When she returned to Romania, she set to work, organizing Creators of Peace Circles for women, and the Club for Young Leaders, which met twice a week and offered training, speakers and retreats. To stimulate interest, and widen horizons, she arranged visits from members of the international IofC network. In 2015 she and her colleagues set up an NGO, the Center for Social Transformation, to continue this work.

She also became involved in working to combat prejudice against Romania’s Roma minority. ‘I made sure that in everything I did, there was someone from the Roma community, who could speak for themselves. Quite a lot of people have changed their attitudes because of these interactions. My role is not to “help” the Roma, but to influence the majority to think and do differently.’

My role is [...] to influence the majority to think and do differently.

At the same time, she became involved at Caux – spending two summers in the diet kitchen and five in the allocation office. Since 2017, she has headed up the teams running Addressing Europe’s Unfinished Business and its successor conference, Tools for Changemakers, of which she was the Managing Director. When the pandemic struck in 2020, she and her team took the conference online. She was also Vice-President of Creators of Peace International.

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‘Every time I go to Caux I learn something new,’ she says, ‘not just skills, but also about human relations, teamwork. There are frictions and conflicts. I ask myself whether I could have found better words, had more compassion, taken the time to listen. I constantly shape myself through these interactions. Sometimes I have been very hurt, but I have learnt not to take every disagreement as a personal attack.

For me Caux is how the world would be if it was at its best.

‘For me Caux is how the world would be if it was at its best. In our conferences we aim to inspire people but also to challenge them. I hope that their experience in Caux will have an impact on their personal lives: that they will look back, as I do to my first visit, and see it as a starting point.’

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo top: Initiatives of Change
• Photo summer in Caux, Rajmohan Gandhi: Diana Damsa
• All other photos: Diana Topan

The founding generation of the Caux conference centre wanted to make it ‘a home for the world’. Many gave furniture, fittings and paintings. The Caux Palace’s resident historian, Andrew Stallybrass, writes:

The first of two doctorates on Moral Re-Armament/Initiatives of Change (MRA/IofC) in Switzerland has just been awarded to Cyril Michaud. His research, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), covers 1932 to 1969.

Among his findings is the important part played by women and families in the history of the movement. One such network was Robert Hahnloser and some members of the Jäggli family. Over the generations, members of this family have not only participated in Caux conferences, but also played a major part in financing and furnishing the centre.

Lisbeth Lasserre came from Winterthur, where her grandparents, Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser, had built up a private collection of art at their home, Villa Flora. Amongst their artist friends were Bonnard, Vallotton, Giacometti, Manguin, the sculptor Maillol, the group of painters known as the Nabis and the Fauves. They passed their passion for art on to the next generation and to their granddaughter.

When a hundred Swiss families and individuals decided to buy the old Caux Palace hotel and turn it into a centre for reconciliation, Robert Hahnloser, a cousin of Lisbeth’s mother, was one of the two signatories to the contract. ‘My uncle invited me to Caux in 1948,’ Lisbeth says. ‘I was still a schoolgirl. I was fascinated by his great vision that the world could change through people who adopt ethical values. I discovered a new perspective!’

I was fascinated by his great vision that the world could change through people who adopt ethical values.

She met with young Americans and Scandinavians, Germans and French, and she decided to apply honesty in exams and with money. Sharing hidden secrets with her parents was difficult but liberating. She wanted to work with Moral Re-Armament, but her father insisted on her getting a training first, so she studied to be a tri-lingual secretary. She then travelled widely with different MRA plays and shows.

In 1969, Lisbeth married a Frenchman, Philippe Lasserre, another of the discrete people behind the scenes – during meetings at Caux, Philippe was often out of view in a cabin, interpreting the platform speakers simultaneously. Their home in Paris quickly became a rallying point for students and young people. A young German, who stayed with them for a month while learning French, remembers how Lisbeth took her to the Musée d’Orsay, giving her a private tour and explaining the impressionist paintings in detail.

We made friends in India, Australia and even in New Caledonia where the French were not so welcome.

Philippe and Lisbeth also travelled extensively. She remembers: ‘My husband Philippe and I worked with IofC in many parts of the world. We made friends in India, Australia and even in New Caledonia where the French were not so welcome.’

For many years, the two of them were at the heart of the editorial teams of MRA’s magazines in French, first Tribune de Caux and later Changer. As such, they pioneered the expression of MRA and IofC’s ideas for the French-speaking and Latin world.

Lisbeth and Philippe spent many hours in the the Caux Palace and the Villa Maria finding the right place for each painting and hanging them correctly. The best sitting room, 401, where honoured guests including the Dalai Lama have been received, holds five paintings given by Lisbeth.

In 2019, Philippe died, and in 2021, after many years in France, Lisbeth moved back to Winterthur, to be close to her sister and her nieces. And close to the Villa Flora, which after a thorough renovation will open to the public in 2023 as one of the city’s art museums.

Lisbeth recently wrote: ‘When I think of my more than 89 years on this earth, I am grateful for the inspiration that I’ve received through Initiatives of Change, and for the richness in art – more than words can say. Above all I am grateful for the faith that has carried me.’

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Artists in Caux

Another of the ‘founding generation’ of the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux was the Swiss artist Jeanne Sigg (1907-1988). A number of her paintings hang on the fifth floor corridor. Jeanne encouraged other artists to donate works to the conference centre, and organized sales of art to raise funds. Some of the paintings in the Villa Maria are gifts from Jeanne Sigg’s friends. Over the years, there were a number of conferences bringing together artists from different countries, cultures and disciplines, including the Finnish fresco painter Lennart Segestråle.

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo Villa Flora: Villa Flora, Winterthur
• Photo Philippe and Lisbeth black and white: Initiatives of Change
• Photo Birthday Micheline Sentis: Philippe Lasserre
• Photos paintings and 5th floor corridor: Cindy Bühler
• All other photos: Lisbeth Lasserre

Catherine Guisan is Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, USA. She has written two books on the ethical foundations of European integration. In 2014 she spoke at Caux’s first seminar on Europe's Unfinished Business. She writes:

As the rebellious teenage daughter of a Swiss politician, it was music to my heart to discover many years ago that leaders can ‘change’. Leaders may get creative ideas in times of meditation, and recalibrate emotions, behaviours and policies. Moreover, civil society (ie you and me) can help prompt transformation by reaching out to them, and role-modelling conversion. I learned also of the part which the Caux conferences had played in reconciliation between France and Germany post World War II.(1).

I worked full-time with Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) for 22 years before embarking on an academic career. My research and teaching are shaped by the ideals adopted in my youth, partly learned in Caux.

Fast forward to 2014. Besides speaking at a two-day symposium in Caux on ‘Europe’s Unfinished Business’, I co-led a workshop on ‘Changing paradigms in the eastern regions of Europe’ with Angela Starovoytova of Ukraine.

It was music to my heart to discover that leaders can ‘change’.

In fall 2013 I had spent four months in Russia as a Fulbright scholar. I explained to my Saint Petersburg students why so many Ukrainians disagreed with their president’s decision decision to postpone signing an agreement of association with the European Union (EU), in favour of closer economic ties with Russia.

The Euromaidan demonstrations in late 2013 and early 2014 overturned this decision. Then Russia annexed the Crimea and bloody secessionist movements broke out in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine. 

As the daughter of a French-speaking Swiss father and a Greek Ottoman-born mother, I am no stranger to ‘Europe’s unfinished business’. Remaining part of a multiethnic, multilingual and multinational family is an intellectual and emotional rollercoaster, and it takes work. But what to say in the context of war?

What to say in the context of war?

I entitled my Caux speech: ‘Europe’s unfinished business: living in truth’. Under Communism this was a heroic stance, which sent the late Czech president Vaclav Havel, and others, to prison. It meant rejecting ‘inner emigration’ (ie becoming passive and mired in the consumption society), and speaking up with integrity. What does it mean to ‘live in truth’ in Europe today?

First, there is the ‘truth’ of our commitments. Even in democratic regimes speaking up is never easy. But how do we ascertain that what we say and do corresponds to living in truth? Political theorist Hannah Arendt redefines, with her concept of ‘judging,’ the self-reflective process of quiet time taught in Caux. She suggests that we test our opinions against those of others in free debates, but also that we search for the ‘silent sense’, which in moral and practical matters is called ‘conscience’ (2). Jean Monnet, who helped found the European Coal and Steel Community, was called a ‘man of silence’ who drew strength and clarity from his practice of daily meditation. (3)

We need to grapple with our definition of Europe if we intend to make a difference to history.

There is a second kind of ‘truth’ that matters just as much: factual truth. How to define the ‘Europe’ whose unfinished business we were discussing in Caux? Is it the European Union? Or the Council of Europe of 47 member states including Russia? Or something else? We need to grapple with our definition of Europe if we intend to make a difference to history.

During the workshop I learnt from Ukrainians with diverse ethnic and linguistic identities and points of view. Caux is an amazing place for the scholar interested in ‘lived experiences’, as I am. The shared concern of the Ukrainians was corruption, although reaching out to leaders was not discussed. My interlocutors expected that Ukraine would join the EU soon. I had to explain that this would not be the case, a situation they should face realistically.

In November 2021, I listened to another Ukrainian, a history professor. War threatened again. There can only be a political solution to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, the professor said, and this will take decades. The French-German rapprochement constitutes a precedent.

Does this statement hold after the 2022 Russian invasion ? Sooner or later, a cease fire and later peace must be negotiated. Two peoples will have to reconnect, as the French and Germans did over 70 years of difficult engagement.

Many of the courageous Ukrainians I met in Caux are engaged in defending their country today. They communicate and ask for support through the IofC network. May they one day be able to contribute to peace as courageously as they defend freedom.

First written in November 2021, this article was revised in August 2022.

 

2013 saw the first full-length Caux Dialogues on Land and Security (CDLS), a partnership between Initiatives of Changes’s Initiatives for Lands, Lives and Peace (ILLP) programme, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These events, which took place at the Caux Conference and Seminar Centre, focus on the links between sustainable land management, peace and development. 

These dialogues sprang from the shared vision of Mohammed Sahnoun, President of IofC International (2006-9), and Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of UNCCD (2007-13). One member of the international team who carried them forward was Tom Duncan, an Australian entrepreneur and environmental scientist, who had taken part in the Caux Scholars Program in 2009.

Tom grew up on two Australian farms, one in an inland desert and the other in mountainous land on the east coast. ‘I have experienced great physical healing in Caux – in the clear mountain air and natural spring water – as well as profound transformation of the heart,’ he says. ‘I have made friends for life and feel that together we can change the world, by bridging the divides and restoring a healthy planet.’

I feel that together we can change the world, by bridging the divides and restoring a healthy planet.

Among the 200 participants in the first CDLS in 2013 was Rattan Lal, who later received the World Food Prize for his work on regenerative agriculture. He maintained that if 2.5 billion hectares of degraded land could be regenerated, they could sequester all of humanity’s carbon emissions every year – arresting climate change, reversing the march of desertification and ensuring local and global food security.

Meeting Lal was a pivotal experience for Tom. He and his wife, Chau, who had 20 years’ experience in banking, trade and commercial diplomacy, put their minds to how to mobilize investment for sustainable development. Six years later, at CDLS 2019, they launched Earthbanc, with the aim ‘of reshaping the whole financial ecosystem to support regenerative investment’.

As an ‘impact fintech’ company, Earthbanc joins the worlds of financial services and digital technology. It audits and rates the world’s carbon offset market and checks that the claims of carbon project developers are true. The aim is to bring transparency, exposing ‘greenwash’ operations which reduce humanity’s chances of avoiding runaway climate change and the collapse of Earth’s life support systems. Tom covered this topic in a chapter which he co-authored with Zimbabwean ecologist Allan Savory in Land Restoration, a book arising from the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security, which included chapters by Rattan Lal and ecosystem restoration expert John D Liu. 

Tom enlisted the European Space Agency, who are helping with satellite imagery and remote sensing data. Earthbanc’s satellite tracking is 96 to 99.9 per cent accurate in measuring carbon in trees and some soils, on farmers’ plots as small as 200 square metres – making it 18,000 times more efficient than the industry average, which relies on manual auditing and verification, he says.

The latest research suggests that sequestering carbon in soil, grasslands, trees, mangroves and sea grasses could account for 40 to 50 per cent of the carbon reduction and removal needed before 2030 if the world is to meet the targets set in Paris in 2016. So farmers and agro-foresters who adopt regenerative methods of farming are key to the battle against climate change.

Satellite monitoring also opens carbon incentive payments to the people who are most vulnerable to climate change, the world’s 500 million smallholders. It makes it possible for farmers to assess their carbon impact more frequently and drastically reduces the costs, which have put these incentives beyond their reach in the past.

In South and Central America, Earthbanc assessed smallholders, farming an average of two hectares and earning about $350 a year. If they adopt sustainable farming methods, carbon offset payments could increase their income by $200 a year, a ‘life-changing’ sum. And these methods would lead to greater productivity and increased food security, as well as increasing incomes and access to health care and education.

A thriving mangrove ecosystem can store two to five times more carbon than most tropical forests.

In West Bengal, Earthbanc has helped to provide microfinance to expand bee keeping, restore mangrove forests and sea grass meadows, and plant trees to control erosion. A thriving mangrove ecosystem can store two to five times more carbon than most tropical forests, and protects coastal populations from rising sea levels and hurricane driven storm surges. 

Tom and Chau pioneered the creation of the world’s first ‘Grow Bond’ which pays a yield to investors in regenerative farming and agroforestry. Grow Bonds allow investors to benefit from restoring the earth, and farmers to get lower cost finance to build sustainable livelihoods.

Earlier this year, Earthbanc won an award from Mastercard for its work delivering carbon reporting and sustainable finance advisory to the finance sector, including to Sweden’s oldest bank, Swedbank. ‘This vote of confidence from the finance industry encourages us and our partners to achieve our important mission,’ says Tom.

Earthbanc’s call to action, Tom says, is to ‘people who want to align their own wealth with planetary health’. If they are to succeed, Chau adds, Earthbanc’s mechanisms must be accompanied by a change of hearts and minds, so that investing in environmental protection is seen as a benefit rather than a cost.

In 2019 the annual Caux Dialogues broadened their scope to include the oceans as well as the land, and changed their name to the Caux Dialogues on Environment and Security.

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Watch Tom Duncan speak on how business can address key social and environmental challenges, 2021

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photos (except portrait): Initiatives of Change
• Portrait: Tom Duncan
• Video Tom Duncan, CEO of Earthbanc, on how business can address key social and environmental challenges: Initiatives of Change Business & Economy (YouTube), 2021

When Merel Rumping from the Netherlands first visited Caux in 2012, she had a goal in mind – ‘to explore how I could contribute to a more just world through my professional activities’.

Merel had gained her master’s degree in international relations, with a focus on business ethics. So she had a special interest in the annual Caux business forums on Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy, in which she participated for five years. A conversation with a Colombian businessman there helped her to answer her question.

For three months, when she was 20, she had volunteered in a Colombian orphanage in Medellin where she worked with street children and former child soldiers, many of them addicts. Three years later, in 2006, she returned to Colombia for six months to work with a microfinancing agency, Women’s World Banking. There she saw the potential for social entrepreneurship.  

What struck Merel most was the sheer number of people who had lost their limbs due to landmines.

What struck Merel most on her visits to Colombia was the sheer number of people who had lost their limbs due to landmines during more than five decades of civil war. In one village she visited, there were 300 landmine victims.

The Colombian businessman in Caux introduced her to a Dutchman who worked for an orthopaedic workshop in Asia. In conversations with him a vision grew in her mind of how to provide affordable prosthetic care to low-income amputees.

Students at the Technical University in Delft went with her to Colombia to identify the challenges. ‘One was distance: the orthopaedic centres are mainly in the cities, requiring people to travel long distances without knowing exactly where to go,’ she wrote. ‘And at the product level we noticed that many people indeed had a prosthesis but had put it under their bed because it hurt; some prosthetists in Colombia have never had professional training in how to make prosthetic limbs.’

Many people had a prosthesis but had put it under their bed because it hurt.

What was needed, she realized, were local clinics and a method of making prosthetics in situ that would fit the need of each amputee. Without this it could take up to two years for an amputee to get a prosthetic limb, leading to loss of earnings for them and their families.

With the help of Strathclyde University, Merel’s team created a Majicast socket production unit in 2016: a tubular tank full of casting material, into which the standing patient inserts the amputated limb. This creates a mould, which can produce a bespoke, comfortable socket almost immediately.

Finance from Google Impact Challenge Funding gave the team a flying start. They demonstrated Majicast in several parts of Colombia. In 2019, the University of Strathclyde, who held the patent, continued working on the Majicast, whilst Merel focussed on the creation of orthopaedic care clinics through her own social enterprise, called Carewithinreach.

Her first orthopaedic centre opened in the small city of Tunja in 2021, with the help of impact investor Buxeros Capital.

The Covid pandemic and unrest in Colombia have held things up. Yet by the end of November 2021, the centre had had a positive impact on the lives of 220 patients.

Merel is currently in talks with another investor for the second and third clinics. Her aim is to create five or six local care clinics around the country.

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Watch the video about 6-year-old Keren and life with her prothesis

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Video Conoce a Keren, 6 años: "Gracias a mi prótesis ando en patines y monto bicicleta": Ortopédica Profort (YouTube) 2021
• Photo top: Initiatives of Change
• All other photos: Merel Rumping

For many years, Lucette Schneider from Switzerland organized the team which gathered in the early mornings to wash, peel and chop vegetables for the kitchens of the Caux conference centre. Eliane Stallybrass, who was operations manager in Caux from 2008-2012, knew her well: 

Ann Hartnell, a Canadian who spent many summers heading up cooking teams in Caux, described Lucette Schneider as almost invisible, so efficient and discreet was she in the vegetable kitchen.

Lucette wasn't tall and walked in a way that showed that she had back troubles. But what you remembered most was her warm smile.

She almost invisible, so efficient and discreet was she. But what you remembered most was her warm smile.

Service must have been her second name. She and her husband owned a grocery store and a cheese shop. (She used to cringe at the way people at the buffet at Caux cut themselves slices of cheese without any rind, leaving the tough bits for the last comers, and she showed me that you should cut your slice with a bit of crust, so that everyone would have the same amount of cheese and rind!)

When I was working on room allocation, our team decided to offer Lucette a front room with a view of the lake, as she would be working in the vegetable room all day and would need some sun. She was totally opposed to this idea: ‘You must leave these rooms for the newcomers. I know what the view is like. I can enjoy it the rest of the year.’

When Lucette retired, she decided to take on the vegetable preparation, in memory of her husband. He had worked in the Economat over many summers. Lucette would arrive in the vegetable room in the early morning, find the list of vegetables needed that day and weigh them out for her team to get to work on.

Her team was a motley crew – all conference participants, but mainly the ones who had managed to wake up early! They were mostly older ladies with great experience or men who had never held a potato peeler. Lucette recalled showing a distinguished-looking African how to peel onions. It turned out he was a surgeon and had worked in Bosnia during the war.

Another who volunteered was the Russian philosopher Grigory Pomerants. Lucette had to teach him everything about peeling and cutting vegetables. In return, she  went to listen to his talk, of which she understood very little, despite translation. She felt that was a fair exchange.

Lucette had a talent for making friends, although she never managed to learn English. One day, she admitted to my husband, Andrew, that she was having problems with one young man who was attending the conference, Jorge. She did not like his way of dressing and was particularly bothered by his Mohican haircut. He was not Iroquois and she therefore felt it was not proper. When she first came to Caux, the men all wore ties.

But she was unhappy about her reactions and decided to look for the positive in Jorge. She noticed that he had a beautiful smile. She asked Andrew to make a date for them to meet, as they did not speak a common language. Lucette arrived with a chocolate bar and Jorge told her why he had come to Caux. At the end of the meal they hugged, Jorge with tears in his eyes.

I met Lucette when I was a child. She knew my parents and took my sister and me to Caux in her van in the 1950s – probably my first visit. Years later we bumped into each other in the cafeteria and embarked on a proper friendship.

We remained friends until she died in 2018, aged 99. She and Robert generously allowed us – and many others – to have holidays in their little chalet in the Jura, where everybody slept in the same room and washed at the kitchen sink, using water heated on the wood stove.

One day, Robert said to me, ‘For me there are no sacrifices in life. Only choices.’ Their choices were part of the magic that has made Caux possible.

For me there are no sacrifices in life. Only choices.

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This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photos: Initiatives of Change
• Photo top (from the archives): German ladies cleaning vegetables in the Caux kitchens