In spring 1946, when the first small group of Swiss visited the derelict hotel in Caux which was to become the Initiatives of Change (IofC) conference centre, they realized its ballroom could become a theatre. Within a few years, its conversion was complete, with a scene dock and workshop, fully equipped stage, fly gallery and raked seating. 

Hosts of plays have been produced in the Caux theatre, and small armies of actors and stage crews have laboured here. In 1989 one of its many stars, Michel Orphelin, was back with his one-man show about St Francis of Assissi, Poor Man, Rich Man. Its French version, Un Soleil en Pleine Nuit, had first been staged in Caux in 1980.

I’m just a worker. I do what I can.

Michel is a French mime artist, singer, cabaret performer and actor, engaged in what his son François calls ‘the theatre of poverty’. The true avant-garde, Orphelin believes, lies in great simplicity. ‘What is often missing in complicated productions is that they no longer know how to speak to the heart.’

Theatre, he feels, is about creating and transmitting a relationship of love. It should deal with reality; be simple, without being simplistic. ‘I’m just a worker,’ he says. ‘I do what I can.’

As a young person, he never dared to admit to himself or his parents that he wanted to become a performer. So he went to hotel school. There he and two friends formed an act, Les 3 Horaces, and eventually launched out as professionals. For 12 years they toured together, appearing on television over 70 times. But he still felt a lack of meaning in his life. 

Things began to change on a holiday in Brittany, where at a time of emotional turmoil, watching the sun set in the sea, a sense of certainty flooded in. ‘God exists,’ he says. ‘I’ve met him. He was there for me.’ 

He found that his new faith did not automatically resolve long-standing problems of relationships in his work, and with his mother whom he loved, but with whom he fought continually.

It was through seeing a play in the theatre on his first visit to the conference centre in Caux that he found his life purpose. ‘It was as if I saw the Cross on stage. It was a call to transmit a luminous Cross to people.’ He rebuilt his relationship with his mother, who also found a faith.   

Then friends asked him to play in the musical revue, Anything to Declare? which took him to India. He accepted, though it was not easy being away from his wife Marie-José, a violinist, and his son and daughter.

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He has a vivid memory from that tour of a young man coming to one of the cast after a performance to say that he had given up his plan to kill the person he blamed for the death of his cousin. He had been moved by a sketch which dramatized the real life experience of forgiveness of Irène Laure. Few actors can know, as he does, that they have been in a production which has saved a life.

Few actors can know, as he does, that they have been in a production which has saved a life.

Poor Man, Rich Man was written especially for him by Hugh Steadman Williams, a British playwright engaged with IofC. Michel performed the play in a dozen countries during the 1980s, frequently bringing it back to Caux in the summers.

The tours, with their frequent travel and late nights, had their lighter moments. In one small town, the musical director ordered a piano from a music shop, and on delivery found that some of its strings were broken. ‘But are you absolutely sure you need to play those notes?’ asked the delivery man.

Wherever it went, the play touched people deeply. After one performance, a nun said, ‘You have helped me to rediscover my calling to poverty.’  

In Belgium, a couple came to him with a dilemma: they had adopted three children – should they adopt a fourth? Some nights later, in another town several hundred miles away, they were back again. They had taken the plunge, they said, but instead of one child, they had been asked to adopt a brother and sister. They were going to name them for St Francis and his female counterpart St Clare.   

Like the saint he portrayed, Michel has always been clear about the source of his gift. That’s why he has never been foolish enough, he says, to imagine he is the water himself.

‘Who am I to touch people like this?’ he says. ‘I’m just a pipe for the living water of the Creator to flow through to a thirsty public. All I can do is to try to be a clean pipe. It is essential to have pipes, but they are only pipes.’

Read the French script of Poor Man, Rich Man

Discover the programme of Poor Man, Rich Man

Read an article on the play

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Watch a video of the play (1985)

Watch Michel Orphelin acting in the theatre in Caux (6"00')

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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 Soleil en pleine nuit (Poor man, Rich man), Westminster Productions,1985: Initiatives of Change
• Photo Michel top in article: David Channer
• All other photos and leaflet: Initiatives of Change
• Film Caux 1980: Initiatives of Change

The Caux summer of 1988 at the Initiatives of Change conference centre began with a Mediterranean Dialogue, attended by people from all over the region, followed by a 10-day ‘youth training session’. One of the largest groups to attend these events came from Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim communities, who had been engaged in civil war since 1975. 

Even getting to the airport to fly to Switzerland had its dangers. ‘I had to go through several checkpoints and some of them belonged to our so-called “enemies”,’ remembers Joe Hakim, then 22 years old. ‘It was not so safe for me. But I was convinced I had to go because Initiatives of Change had started changing my life.’

This was Joe’s first trip out of Lebanon. He found himself making friends from many countries. ‘Coming from a situation of war, you feel as if you are the centre of the world. But I started seeing things in a different way: Lebanon and I were no longer the centre. I realized that I did not need to pity myself. I am not a victim. Rather, I am responsible.’

I realized that I did not need to pity myself. I am not a victim. Rather, I am responsible.

In Caux, Joe got to know a Muslim Lebanese, Munir Al Khatib. ‘Once we got home we started with my friends and his friends to build bridges. It was risky at many levels. We gathered people from different backgrounds and communities, to discover the other person who was at some point the enemy.’

For Marie Chaftari, the visit to Caux came at a dark period in her life.  For ten years, she had been a communications officer for the Christian militia: her husband, Assaad, was second in command of its intelligence unit. Then, in 1985, a split in the Christian militia forced them to leave Beirut with their baby son. ‘Overnight we went from being called heroes to being called traitors,’ she says. They lost their home and found themselves living among strangers, in constant fear of assassination.

In 1988, a priest asked Marie when she had last been to confession. ‘What have I got to confess?’ she snapped back. ‘I’m the victim.’ She told him how much she had sacrificed for the cause of Lebanon’s Christians. ‘He said, “What about love? The only cause is love.” Something turned in me, and I began to cry.’

That encounter led to Marie’s visit to Caux that summer, accompanied by her three-year-old son. ‘I came back to myself there,’ she says. ‘I asked myself, how can I be a Christian and hate? I began to look again at my opinions.’

Back in Lebanon, the change in Marie had an impact on her husband, Assaad. He went along to an IofC meeting with a gun hidden under his belt and two bodyguards waiting outside. The meeting challenged him to look back over his life. ‘All I saw was a path full of blood.’

Two years later Assaad took part in his first dialogue with Muslims. He went armed with a list of grievances – and was disconcerted to find a Muslim had brought an even longer list. ‘I discovered many things at those meetings. I discovered Muslims had real names, they had families, dreams, and expectations and that if we did not have the same political opinion we could at least still respect each other.’

I discovered Muslims had real names, they had families, dreams, and expectations and that if we did not have the same political opinion we could at least still respect each other.

In 2000 Assaad wrote an open letter of apology in the Lebanese media for his role in the atrocities committed during the civil war. The New York Times described him as the one major participant in Lebanon’s civil war who had ‘truly apologized’. He and other ex-combatants, Muslim and Christian, founded Fighters for Peace, which works to convince young people that war is not the way.

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Before 1988, Marie says, ‘the Other’ for her was the Muslim. Now one of her closest friends is a Shi’a Muslim, Lina Hamade. Together they founded Linaltaki (’let’s meet’), an organization which brings together women and runs summer camps for children from different communities.

Joe Hakim, too, has devoted his life to building bridges. Now the operations manager of a large company dealing with intellectual property, he says that volunteering in the Caux dining room taught him the meaning of servant leadership.

‘I learnt how to support, help, serve, listen, understand, appreciate – how to work together with people from different backgrounds, communities, perspectives, ages, generations.’ He feels a particular calling to help young people find their purpose in life. ‘I offer my friendship, my fellowship – and this helps me at the same time.’

In the dark days that Lebanon is going through once again, flames like these, lit in Caux over the years, provide sparks of warmth, hope and light.

I learnt how to support, help, serve, listen, understand, appreciate. I offer my friendship, my fellowship – and this helps me at the same time.

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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 Marie, Linaltaki, Fighters of Peace: John Bond (photo top: Marie Chaftari (right) with Iman Al Ghafari from Syria and Lina Hamade)
• All other photos: Joe Hakim

Mother Park Chung Soo, a Won Buddhist nun, has been called the ‘Mother Teresa of South Korea’. She was already involved in humanitarian work in Korea when she came to the Initiatives of Change conference centre Caux in 1987, but an encounter there added a new dimension to her vocation.

For 35 years, from 1910 to 1945, Japan occupied Korea. Mother Park was born in 1937 and had painful memories of Japan’s attempts to erase Korean culture. ‘We were not allowed to use our own language,’ she said. ‘We had to change our family name. We worked hard in the fields but we were not allowed to eat what we produced. Instead we had to eat pine tree cones and the husks of the beans.’

When she arrived in Caux, Mother Park was touched by the care her Swiss hostess, Sylvia Zuber, had put into making her room welcoming, with flowers, chocolate and cards. ‘I could feel with my whole body that this had all been prepared by Sylvia with her love for us,’ she wrote later.

Sylvia persuaded Mother Park to have lunch with two young Japanese, Kiyoshi Nagano and Yuki Miura. ‘Kiyoshi Nagano tried to speak in Korean,’ she recalled. ‘His attitude removed the feelings of hatred in my heart.’ 

‘With tears she told us of all the suffering she had gone through in the Japanese colonization of Korea,’ remembers Kiyoshi. ‘I was translating for my Japanese friend. We all began to weep. “These tears have washed away my bitterness,” she said to us.’

His attitude removed the feelings of hatred in my heart.

‘The two young Japanese asked forgiveness for the mistakes of their ancestors as if they had committed them themselves,’ Mother Park wrote later. She realized that she was feeling pain at hurting them. ‘A new door began to open to accept them like a close brother and sister.’ 

Mother Park had entered the Won Buddhist order at the age of 19. ‘When I was nine, my mother used to tell me that I have to help people throughout my life,’ she said. ‘That was my calling. The journey has been beautiful, if not easy.’

In 2010, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and reached the top ten in a field of 237. Her humanitarian work, through the Relief Foundation which carries her name, spans 55 countries.

When I was nine, my mother used to tell me that I have to help people throughout my life. That was my calling. The journey has been beautiful, if not easy.

In Korea, her work has focused on training blind people in life skills for independent living, supporting leprosy sufferers in St Lazarus Catholic village, and setting up two boarding schools – one for teenagers excluded from mainstream schools and the other for teenagers who have escaped from North Korea.

She visited North Korea three times, to see the living conditions there first hand, and sent relief to flood victims and refugees there.

As Cambodia emerged from decades of war, she raised US$100,000 towards removing landmines, sent many container loads of clothing and medicines, and funded water pumps and wells. She worked with the Red Cross to provide artificial limbs for the victims of landmines in Afghanistan, and sent medical supplies to 15 African countries.

In 1992, she established a boarding school in Ladakh in northern India, for students who previously had to travel hundreds of miles to the south for education and were therefore forced to be away from their parents for long periods. By 2017, it had 835 students.

Despite being one of India’s largest districts, Ladakh only had one public hospital, in its capital city, Leh. Patients were often referred to Delhi or Chandigarh – a long expensive journey which few could afford. In 1996, Mother Park provided the initial funding for a charitable hospital, which serves patients in Leh and provides medical care to remote villages.

Her experience in Caux gave Mother Park a vision for what Japan and Korea could together give to the world, which she expressed at an Initiatives of Change conference in Japan in 2002: ‘If both Korean and Japanese people could open their hearts, we could become good friends. It would be wonderful if our two countries could cooperate more closely in peacebuilding for the developing countries.’ Her speech inspired young Japanese and Koreans to start a project to promote dialogue between their contemporaries.

Watch an interview and video extracts with Mother Park (by Arirang on YouTube)

With input from Yeonyuk Jeong and Kiyoshi Nagano

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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 courtesy of Yeonyuk Jeong, Kiyoshi Nagano and the Ven. Mother Park Chung-Soo Won Buddhist Relief Foundation

As plans for celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux got underway, Eliane Stallybrass began to dream. In 1946 the pioneers of Caux had volunteered their time and energy to prepare the derelict hotel for the first conferences. Could younger generations relive this experience through helping to put the house in shape for summer 1986?  

The two men responsible for the maintenance of the house, Werner Fankhauser and Christoph Keller, responded enthusiastically to this idea, and over Easter 63 people arrived in Caux to start work. The initiative was so successful that these Work Weeks continued for many years with participants from all over Europe.

Helene Schäfer (then Pick) remembers:

By 1986, the Caux Palace – the distinguished lady with the deep soul – was getting old. For decades she had witnessed history in the making. She provided cosy corners to reflect and self-actualize. And she offered open space for discussions and sometimes life-changing decisions. And now she needed help to restore her dignity.

I was in my final years at boarding school, with the time and energy to spend my holidays helping with this mission. I got together with five classmates and we set off. We had no experience, but plenty of enthusiasm. We climbed ladders, we drilled and painted, we scraped and scratched and screwed. And we had lots of fun.

We talked with people of different backgrounds and cultures. My parents had worked fulltime with Moral Re-Armament (MRA, now Initiatives of Change) for over 20 years, so I knew what I was up to. But my friends found themselves having real conversations in languages they hadn’t thought they would ever use outside the classroom. So the spirit of Caux worked even if we weren’t sitting on the terrace, sipping cups of tea.

The spirit of Caux worked even if we weren’t sitting on the terrace, sipping cups of tea.

Mind you, not all of my friends took to the ideas of MRA. But being at Caux challenges you to do some soul-searching, no matter where that leads you. It´s always good to do that in beautiful surroundings where you can let your spirits soar. We need these inspiring places where you can find peace to ask the questions of life, try to find some answers and exchange openly. The older I get, the more I see that.

Ulrike Ott Chanu remembers:

I grew up in a small village in rural Germany. My parents never learned a foreign language and never really felt the need to travel, but I used to sit and spin our globe, dreaming of all the exotic places and people out there.

When I was 18, one of my closest friends at school, Helene, told me about this conference centre in the Swiss mountains where her parents used to work and where we could go for free to prepare the buildings for the summer. Abroad sounded good, free sounded great, so off we went in April 1986.  

On my first night there, I lay awake for hours. My brain was in total overload – the amazing beauty of the Caux Palace, the stunning view, so many friendly people, speaking different languages. And me right in the midst of it. It felt like a whole new world had opened up.

The work week was real work. We sanded down and painted what felt like hundreds of iron chairs and tables from the terrace. But there were also many lovely moments chatting as we swung our paint brushes.

Even though there was a lovely younger crowd and lots of fun, it was an encounter with an elderly Swiss which really shaped my vision of Caux.

From the outside he didn’t have that much in common with us. He had health issues and I don’t think he was even part of the 'official' work teams.

But he was always there, in the background, taking time to talk with us. We felt his deep and sincere interest in what we had to say. Looking back I realize what a precious gift he gave to a bunch of 18-year-olds. He went on writing to us for many years until he died.

That first work week in Caux was the beginning of many different chapters in my life. It definitely broadened my mind and launched amazing friendships. I went on to interpret from the translation cabins and work behind the scenes during the summer conferences and still feel very much attached to Caux. Thirty-five years on, the place still inspires me every time I drive up the mountain.

It’s also the place where I met my husband! And believe it or not, the region in France where we now live is called ‘Pays de Caux’ (Land of Caux).

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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, seamstresses and benches: Eliane Stallybrass
• Photo portrait Helene: Helene Schäfer
• All other photos: Ulrike Ott Chanu

Renée Pan, a Cambodian refugee living in the US, came to Caux in 1985 on a mission – to learn how to forgive.

Renée had fled Cambodia with her two younger children in 1975, five days before the Khmer Rouge took over the country. (Her eldest child was already in the US.) Her husband, who was deputy prime minister, stayed behind. She never saw him again. She could only assume he was one of up to two million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.

In the US, Renée studied statistics and computer science and found work. She also joined up with the Cambodian exiles who were working to liberate their country, but was discouraged by the feuding between them. Her efforts to promote unity only seemed to create more distrust.

‘My energy did not regenerate itself,’ she recalled. ‘My brain was empty and my heart was numb and insensitive. I got angry very easily, hated bad people, was unhappy, selfish and did things foolishly.’

By 1985 Renée was living in Minneapolis-St Paul, where she saw For the Love of Tomorrow, a film about Irène Laure’s work of reconciliation after losing her hatred of the Germans at Caux in 1947. She decided to go to the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux that summer to meet her. Local friends made it possible for her to take time off from work and family, and one of them, Catherine Guisan, travelled with her.

Renée plunged into life at Caux, but struggled with the challenge it posed to her life. ‘Every night I had a fight with myself,’ she said. Finally she had a short meeting with Irène Laure (then aged 87) and asked her how to forgive. Irène told her that the key was to take time in silent reflection, alone.

I was always wanting so much to help others, I had never thought of liberating myself.

‘I was always wanting so much to help others, I had never thought of liberating myself,’ Renée recalled. ‘Through that quiet time the Buddha teachings became real to me for the first time. I realized that my mind was consumed with the “three fires of the world” – greed, anger and foolishness.’ She decided to spend time in quiet every day, as ‘an indispensable food to nurture my mind’.

Renée spoke from the platform at Caux of her decision to forgive the Khmer Rouge. ‘You could have heard a pin drop,’ remembers Catherine. ‘Forgiving the Khmer Rouge was understandably controversial at that time.’

Her first step on returning to the US was to apologize to friends for putting them down. She made both a personal and a public apology to a leader of the Cambodian liberation movement, and it was accepted. ‘I felt such relief,’ she said.

In 1988, Renée and friends in Minneapolis-St Paul founded the Cambodian Children’s Education Fund (CCEF). Gerry Kozberg, a senior Saint Paul school administrator, helped her conceive an innovative programme to set up computer centres in Cambodian villages. For Gerry, who was of Jewish Russian descent, this was a way to contribute to rebuilding society after another people’s experience of genocide, beside the Holocaust.

Vietnam had occupied Cambodia in 1979 and thrown out the Khmer Rouge. Ongoing fighting meant that the CCEF focused on providing teachers’ training in the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border.

With great courage, Renée went to speak to 40 teachers in the camp reserved for Khmer Rouge refugees, following through on her decision at Caux to forgive and ask forgiveness. ‘I was quiet and calm. I knew that the hatred was over at that moment.’ Afterwards one of the officers asked her, ‘Can the world ever forgive us?’

In 1991 the Paris Agreement brought Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia to an end. Renée returned to rebuild her country, working with the UN peacekeeping operation in the run-up to democratic elections in 1993 – and promoting reconciliation alongside colleagues inspired by the ideas of Caux. One of their tools was a Khmer translation of For the Love of Tomorrow. She went on to help set up Cambodia’s National Computing Centre. However, political conditions made it impossible to pursue the CCEF programme.

I was quiet and calm. I knew that the hatred was over at that moment.

In 1994, Renée and other Cambodians inspired by the ideas of Initiatives of Change invited David Channer – who had made For the Love of Tomorrow – and his son Alan to make films to foster healing and renewal in Cambodia. More than 1,000 copies of two films, The Serene Smile and The Serene Life, for which Renée served as a consultant, were distributed across the country.

In 1998 Renée became a Buddhist nun (see top photo), taking the monastic name of Ajahn Bodhipālā. She is now a member of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK.

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Watch the film For the Love of Tomorrow which changed Renée's life.

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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: For the love of tomorrow, Initiatives of Change
• Photo top: Pan family
• Photo Renée in Caux kitchen: Robert Lancaster
• All other photos: David Channer

Amie Zysset from Switzerland was the heart and soul of the international family conferences which took place in Caux from 1978 through the 1980s. She died – aged only 60 – after many months in hospital, on the last day of the 1984 conference. ‘If I die before the family conference, I will watch over you from above,’ she had announced.

During her training to be a domestic science teacher, at the end of the 1940s, Amie had stayed in a boarding house for young women called ‘La Grande Aventure’ (the great adventure) in Lausanne. Its director, Frida Nef, had been involved in the creation of the Caux conference centre and shared her enthusiasm for the place with her residents. This is how Amie discovered her vocation.

It began with learning Swiss German in a Bernese family. The Flütsch family had four children and the mother was sometimes away with her husband on missions with Moral Re-Armament (MRA/later Initiatives of Change).

They spent every summer in Caux and took Amie and the children with them. She got involved in the life of the conference centre, at first helping with the cooking, as was only natural with her training.

But two passions were to develop and give her other avenues of activity.

Amie had a huge interest in the development and wellbeing of children. In 1969, there were many families in Caux. Amie decided to take charge of the 7- to 12-year-olds, while Monika Flütsch (now Bodmer), whom she had taken care of 14 years earlier, created the kindergarten in the Grand Hotel in Caux.

On more than one occasion, we and our children have benefited from this disinterested outside help that so many families lack today.

Amie knew how to listen to children and, alongside games, cooking and other activities, offered them  discussions on themes that were important to them, such as getting along with their brothers and sisters, family life and even divisions between their parents. These discussions led to the creation of a small newspaper, where the children could express their thoughts and thus help other children.

Amie was not a typist, had no journalistic training and knew nothing about publishing, but she had the gift of using her limitations to develop the talents of others. So Elephant and Mouse was born, published in French and German, full of questions, reflections, personal stories, games and drawings. It came out every two months, and the adventure lasted 15 years. The print run reached 400 copies.

She was also concerned about the parents and, as Jean-Jacques Odier wrote, would sometimes take them aside with a word of advice. ‘On more than one occasion, we and our children have benefited from this disinterested outside help that so many families lack today.’

One Christmas, Amie and Monika staged the MRA pantomime Give a Dog a Bone in Caux with a cast only of children.

Her other passion was the life and future of her region, the Jura, where tensions between Catholics and Protestants had turned violent. As a citizen from the small town of Reconvilier, she counted among her friends many of those involved in the region’s political and social problems. The photo at the top shows Amie (on the right) with Debora Kupferschmidt, a Swiss German-speaking friend from 'the other side' of the local conflict.

She invited friends from divided communities in Canada and Ireland, and from Papua New Guinea, to visit the region and share their experiences of reconciliation. She also took friends from the Jura to other countries. During a trip to India, she and a friend found themselves sitting next to Mother Teresa on the plane!

She had the gift of using her limitations to develop the talents of others.

Sadly, it was in India that she contracted a disease which was never fully diagnosed and which took her life. She often wrote personalized poems, as gifts for her friends. Many of them were published in a small book after her death.

As we work on these stories of people round the 75th anniversary of the Caux conference centre, we’re struck by the number of relatively unheralded women – like Amie Zysset – who are entirely worthy of appearing here. The great adventure of Caux would not have been possible without this shadow army working in so many areas of the Caux conference centre and the work of Initiatives of Change in general, giving time and money, creativity and care.

Read Amie's collection of poetry Amie pour toujours (by Amie Zysset and Marielle Thiebaud, 1987)

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Watch a 1965 production of the play Give a Dog a Bone.

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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.

• Give a Dog a Bone: Initiatives of Change
• Amie pour toujours: Amie Zysset and Marielle Thiebaud, 1987)
• All photos (except Monica): Initiatives of Change
• Photo Monica Flütsch: Lars Rengfelt