As all organizations, we have been impacted by Covid financially but it has also impacted our way of working. Working remotely has now become the new normal for our team and so we’ve decided to downsize our Geneva offices. We are happy to have found a new home in the International Environment House II in Geneva.

Our new address is now:

Initiatives of Change Switzerland

International Environment House II

Chemin de Balexert 9

CH-1219 Châtelaine- Geneva

We look forward to welcoming you to our new offices as soon as the situation permits.

Our official headquarters remain in Caux (Rue du Panorama 2, CH-1824 Caux). You will also find our updated contact info here.

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Abeda Nasrat came to Denmark as a refugee from Afghanistan at the age of two.  She now studies Law at the University of Copenhagen and works as a student assistant at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Abeda was a participant of the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme in 2019. In an interview for CPLP Talks she talks about culture and identity.

What does ‘culture’ mean for you?

When I think of culture, I remember the things that I grew up around – my grandmother putting henna on my hands, celebrating the Afghan New Year and the Islamic festivals, wearing Afghan clothes, the dancing and all the food. How I lived at home was distinctly different from what I experienced whenever I stepped outside the door.

I came to Denmark when I was about two years old. I was put into a kindergarten for refugees. I had a lot of friends who like me, were part of a ‘minority’. We connected over the fact that we ‘didn’t belong’. We shared the same struggles. We all had difficulty speaking Danish and felt a little embarrassed about having a different culture. I grew up surrounded by Arabs, Somalis and Turks.

I don’t think I would be aware of culture if I hadn’t grown up in Denmark, a space where my culture was in a minority. I was soon faced with the reality that Afghan and Danish cultures were contradictory. Danish culture is very liberated, whereas Afghan culture was very traditional. I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted, because I was under social pressure from both cultures. I always chose to do the opposite. At home I would act out Danish culture and at school I would act out Afghan culture. This was my way of finding a space to define and and discover myself.

How significant was language in creating your identity?

The language we shared as immigrants was more about how we communicated, than what we spoke. We all greeted each other by kissing. We were all, children and adults, extremely expressive. We shared body language, the little acts that we all understood. Language was not so much what we said, as what we did. I know my grandmother loves henna, so I show my appreciation to her by going to her room and asking her to put henna on my hands. Then her face lights up. Music has also been an important feature in identifying myself. When I hear Pashto music I connect to the life I never had in Afghanistan, and it sort of shows me who I could be.

I remember from Caux that you are an exceptional footballer. You told us that you play football as part of your ‘rebellion from the expectations from your Afghan culture’?  

In Afghanistan, women cannot play football. Some years ago, a member of the  Afghanistan women’s football team had to flee to Denmark because the Taliban was after her. This paints a picture of how Afghan culture sets expectations on how women should behave – on men too, but more on women. When guests come, we speak a certain way and act in a certain way. There are social expectations and barriers, for both girls and guys.

I grew up with four brothers, doing ‘boy things’, climbing trees and playing football. When  we went home, I had to dress differently, and I felt that was unfair. We had to act a particular way for no reason, except to say ‘this is who we are and this is what we do’. So football was my rebellion. As someone who has never belonged, I know I belong on a football pitch.

I fought hard to prove to my parents that I can’t be the Abeda they want or need me to be. My father was really helpful as he was open to me being who I wanted to be. He sat me down and said we could meet in the middle. And that was really important for me.

In your view, is culture learnt or is it lived?

I find myself challenging the structures that disagree with my personal values. Culture informs us of what we should do, and what we should not do, and sometimes we can see that it is wrong and unfair. When I talked about this with my friends, we all agreed that we are quick to speak about things we would like to change in our cultures, but we do not find it safe to engage in these discussions at home, with our families. It is almost as if we find it acceptable to concede and follow culture at home.

I disagree with a lot of things which have become prevalent in our culture. One of these things is the focus on material status. People are judged on the basis of what they have, as opposed to their character. I disagree with the concept of honour, which has different standards for different genders. It traps women and that is unfair in itself. The perennial struggle is to find a balance between what you know to be right or wrong and what culture sees as acceptable and unacceptable.

One final, unfair question: how do you identify yourself?

I’ve learned that I will always be slash something. I am Danish slash Afghan, woman slash tomboy, refugee slash Muslim. These are all my identities, but the best way to identify myself would be as a third culture kid. My upbringing in Denmark was so beautiful. I was raised in the Turkish and Arab mosque, so naturally I connect with these cultures. When I am with my close friends we all dance dabke, buraanbur and attan (Arab, Somali and Afghan dances). That’s why culture means so much to me, because it gave me the power to connect with people from all around the world.

One of the people who helped me find my identity was my class teacher, Ole. He changed my life. I went to a catholic school and had a hard time fitting in. He taught me to take pride in my values and the parts of my identity that didn’t fit in. He was the first person in my life to accept me for me. When we graduated, he had to choose one person to a give a scholarship to – and, to everyone’s surprise, he choose me.

I still remember his speech, eight  years later. He said that what he valued most about me was my roots, my religion and the combination of Denmark and Afghanistan. I hold these words dear to my heart since that day. I really believe that I would be a totally different Abeda, if I had not met this teacher. So I guess you could say that Afghanistan gave me roots and Denmark gave me wings.

If you would like to take part in an online conversation on Saturday, 23 Januray 2021 at 13:00 GMT on the topic of culture, with other Alumni of the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme, you can sign up here for the next CPLP Talks! 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email telling you how to join the meeting.

Find out more about the CPLP Talks here. Please read the terms and conditions here.

Discover the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme.

Sebastian Hasse grew up near the former border between West and East Germany during the period of reunification and reflects on culture, emotions and their impact on our lives.

Whenever I want to write about my cultural roots, the same feelings rise up in me  – reluctance and suppressed anger, unlived grief and helplessness. For as long as I can remember, I have been trying to free myself from my origins, which have given me so much on the one hand and denied me so much on the other.

I grew up in a ‘patchwork family’ in a medium-sized town in West Germany, near the border with East Germany. Patchwork families – which include children from the parents’ previous marriages – were not so common back then. We were a very middle-class household where the father earned the money and the mother was a housewife. My four sisters and I attended a traditional old-style grammar school. From early on, I had difficulty identifying with it. I was more enthusiastic about the musical theatre after-school group and I met my first girlfriend during a German-French school exchange.

German reunification was the central political and cultural event of my childhood, both in the sense of a social challenge and on the family level. My stepmother, who had looked after me since I was about two, came from East Germany. She had spent two years in prison there as a political prisoner but we never really talked about it at home.

From my point of view we also didn't really talk about feelings. That didn't mean that there were no feelings or that I wasn't loved. But I don't remember receiving the support I needed in many emotionally difficult situations. Today I know that my parents and teachers were unable to offer this because the generations before them had simply never learned how to. These generations had lived through, and been responsible for, two world wars.

Every imprint is a cultural imprint. Culture is all-encompassing. The people who shape you cannot escape their own cultural imprint any more than you can. It is unfair that you cannot change what has shaped you, especially in early childhood. It hurts you and holds you back. Freeing yourself is literally a lifetime’s task.

These encounters [...] have allowed me to keep growing, both in my self-understanding and in my curiosity about the world.

In doing this work on myself, I have always felt in good hands in Caux. I have almost exclusively met people there who valued and aspired to this liberation as much as I did. Later I understood that this feeling is not limited to Caux – it just meets you there in a very concentrated form. Nevertheless, I cherish every single moment I was able to spend there within the framework of the Caux Forum conferences and the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme.

Time and again, these encounters with people who have different cultural roots from me have challenged and often overwhelmed me. But it is these encounters that have allowed me to keep growing, both in my self-understanding and in my curiosity about the world. They have shown me what I already possess and what I still lack. They have given me pride in my origins and made me feel despair about all that I lacked in my childhood. And it is precisely these intercultural encounters that make me feel the joy of life most intensely.

Sebastian Hasse's career path has been serpentine. He started out studying Computer Science in his hometown, Lübeck. Realizing that this diploma did not make him happy he followed an acting career, changed to filmmaking and finally returned to IT as a consultant in the family business. He is first chairperson of a small volunteer-based NGO in Berlin which focuses on non-formal education for young adults in Central- and Eastern Europe. Through several international encounters over the years, he found his way to IofC and Caux. This inspired him to train in mediation and to be part of the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme in 2019. Sebastian loves stories and believes that paradoxes and contradictory perspectives are an essential part of human life.

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If you would like to take part in an online conversation on Saturday, 23 Januray 2021 at 13:00 GMT on the topic of culture, with other Alumni of the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme, you can sign up here! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email telling you how to join the meeting.

Please read the terms and conditions here.

Find out more about the CPLP Talks here.

Find out more about the Caux Peace and Leadership Programme.

Global Entrepreneurship Week in November 2020 included E-SPACE, a three-day hybrid event, which offered a range of master classes and conferences. Rainer Gude, Co-Director General of Initiatives of Change Switzerland was invited to take part in its closing panel.

The theme of the closing panel of E-SPACE was ‘How to become the changemaker of tomorrow?’ The three panelists – Ingeborg Albert, Innovation Manager at Geneus, Didier Fischer, President of the Servette Sports Group, and Rainer Gude – discussed how entrepreneurs can transform their ideas into reality and bring about positive change. 

Ingeborg Albert pointed to three main risks which confront entrepreneurs: an idea may not fulfil a need in society, it may not work in the market, and its execution may fail. To minimize these risks, she said, you need to tackle them one by one. First, clarify your idea and get feedback on it from as many people as you can. That will help you ascertain whether there is a need for your idea. Then you can address the other risks. At each step, you need to build, measure and learn. ‘Entrepreneurship is not just for creative and bold people,’ she concluded. ‘The more you do, the better you get at it. It is a process like any other. You should consider it as a career path, but then let yourself be supported by experts.’ Geneus supports entrepreneurs throughout the whole process.

‘There are great ideas in all the world’s drawers, but only entrepreneurs concretize them,’ said Didier Fischer. The entrepreneur spirit has three elements, he said. The first one is passion: don’t go down a path for money if you are not passionate about it. You will need that passion to fuel all the effort that your endeavor will demand. Secondly, be clear on what the added value of your idea is. And thirdly, you have to be different. At each step of the way, from the product to the structure of your organization, ask yourself how you can differentiate yourself.

There are great ideas in all the world’s drawers, but only entrepreneurs concretize them.

- Didier Fischer

Rainer Gude pointed out that if you want your ideas to change the world for the better, you first need to be the change yourself. Start by asking yourself six basic questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. Who are you? Find who you are beyond what you do, beyond what people say about you, and beyond what you have, otherwise nothing that you will do will ever give you contentment. Finding your purpose and your values will help you see what you want to change in the world. Don’t think that the when is necessarily in the future. See every moment as an opportunity to start over, again and again. Keep asking yourself why you want to do it and stay open, because your ideas might change over time. Lastly how? By doing the inner work first. Use silence and keep listening to that important (but often ignored) expert – your own inner voice.

The panelists agreed that failure is an important part of all entrepreneurs’ paths. ‘We are all afraid to fail, but the more often you try and fail, the more you learn,’ said Ingeborg. However, she continued, be smart and specify your maximum affordable loss beforehand. Didier added that both failure and success are dangerous, depending on how you treat them. Even if you succeed, you can learn something for the next part of the project. They ended by stressing the important part that communications – especially with your own employees – play in achieving success.

Photos & video: E-SPACE

During Global Entrepreneurship Week in November 2020, Initiatives of Change Switzerland took part in E-SPACE, a three-day hybrid event, which offered a range of master classes and conferences. Annika Hartmann, Managing Director of the Ethical Leadership in Business programme, offered a masterclass on ‘Surviving a crisis’.

Crises are not only difficult times, but they also mark a point of change – and therefore of opportunity, Annika Hartmann told participants in her masterclass on ‘Surviving a crisis’. She identified tools and strategies which entrepreneurs can use to prepare themselves for such times.

Entrepreneurs are all about finding solutions, she said, but this requires resilience. Those who have developed this quality can bounce back more quickly and with less stress than those who haven’t.  The good news is that everyone can strengthen their resilience, but first, she said, ‘you need to apply the oxygen mask principle and take care of yourself’.

She suggested taking time in quietness every day to gain clarity on your situation, on the purpose and values which guide your actions, and on the way forward. Journaling is another great way to discover yourself. However, Annika warned, this is a marathon, not a sprint – these tools will be most useful when practised regularly, in the long term.

Resilience also involves external factors. Social connections at different levels (personnel, professional and community) can offer support. Being isolated is harmful for to health and it is important to reach out to others.  

Participants also had the chance to watch three young people from countries in crisis telling us about their own coping strategies. Antoine from Lebanon explained that as his country started a revolution in 2019, he had found it helpful to keep a healthy distance from the news, practice quiet times and surround himself with people with whom he had a mutually supportive relationship. But he was still unprepared for the crisis which followed Beirut’s explosion in August. What had helped him then was joining others in cleaning up streets, churches and houses. Through this, he had come to accept what had happened.

Sidra from Syria explained that most people in her country live below the poverty line, but wallowing in the situation does not help. She had found strength in her practice of journaling and quiet time and had decided to reach out to others. She found other young people who wanted to make a difference and together they are taking initiatives to change the world’s perception of Syria and to help people in need.

Lastly, Mark from Belarus described his practice of protest and solidarity during the troubled times that have followed his country’s elections. ‘Help others when you can,’ he said, ‘but also don’t hesitate to ask for help yourself.’ We can find much strength and support in our communities.

With these strategies to build resilience at hand, Annika Hartmann closed by telling participants that it was now up to each of them to create their own survival toolkit.

The theme of 2020’s Geneva Peace Week was ‘Rebuilding Trust after Disruption: pathways to reset international cooperation’. On 6 November, Initiatives of Change and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy held an online panel discussion on ‘environmental peacebuilding’, as part of this annual feature of the international peacebuilding calendar.

One hundred and fifteen people attended the online panel discussion, which was moderated by Anna Brach, Head of Human Security at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and conceived by Dr Alan Channer, a peacebuilding and environment specialist with IofC International’s Initiatives for Land, Lives and Peace programme. Channer is also involved in IofC Switzerland's Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security and the dialogue's Summer Academy on Land, Security and Climate.

The session explored the dynamics of environmental peacebuilding through three case-studies with a view to replicating and scaling-up solutions.

Channer opened the panel by explaining that since the environmental crisis ultimately threatens eveyone’s security, it requires a global and collaborative response. He reflected on the strong relationship forged between France and Germany after the World War II, partly catalysed at IofC conferences in Caux, Switzerland. ‘As well as the reconciliation between individuals, there was a decision to collaborate on shared natural resources,’ Channer said. ‘The intention of French Prime Minister Robert Schuman and other statesmen of the time was to strengthen long-term peace.’

‘We can look at environmental peacebuilding in a similar way,’ Channer maintained. ‘When we strengthen collaboration to safeguard the natural environment, on which we are all mutually dependent, we also strengthen the bonds of peace. Environmental peacebuilding must come to define our era, or the human story will be over.’

Irene Ojuok, until recently the National Technical Specialist on Environment and Climate Change with World Vision Kenya, described how land degradation makes survival challenging for many of her country’s rural population. People are hungry, she said, ‘and a hungry person is a dangerous one’.

Fights over territory and resources impact everyone, including children who grow up amidst violence and risk perpetuating it. ‘It has been difficult to motivate people to restore the land because it can take years to see the benefits and people need to eat now,’ she said – and this was why a shift in mindset is needed first. ‘You need to regreen your heart to regreen your landscape – and you need to be the change you want to see.’ Ojuok explained how farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is restoring livelihoods and empowering communities to manage their land sustainably.

Dr Raj Upreti, Executive Chair at the Policy Research Institute of Nepal, shared how drought, irregular rainfall, floods, avalanches and landslides pose serious security risks to the Nepalese people, causing increased conflicts. He described a strategy to restore human security by connecting local skills and wisdom with public policy, thereby making local institutions more effective and responsible. He put down the success of this strategy to its collaborative approach.

Lastly, Kelechi Eleanya, Team Leader at the EverGreening Network for Forest and Land Restoration (ENFORLAR) in Nigeria, talked about the Akassa community in the Niger Delta, where massive oil extraction has damaged the environment and threatened people’s livelihoods, leading to armed conflict.

Eleanya presented the ‘Akassa Model’, developed to promote local conservation and bring sustainable peace. He said the model is being emulated because it is highly inclusive and involves a bottom-up approach. Statoil/BP are involved in the project as a way of making reparations to the community.

These inspiring case-studies suggest that sustainable solutions to ecological problems require social cooperation. Replication and scaling-up depends on collaboration; the work of trustbuilding to safeguard our shared future is more urgent than ever.

Find out more about the Caux Dialogue on Environment and Security and the Summer Academy on Land, Security and Climate.

Report by Elodie Malbois and Alan Channer

Photo teaser: Leela Channer