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

Mohan Bhagwandas is all too aware of his carbon footprint. In the 13 years from 2006 to 2019, he flew 17 times from his home city of Melbourne, Australia, to Switzerland to take part in the Caux conferences – a total distance of 578,000 km, with each flight lasting about 24 hours.

He was the International Coordinator for the annual forums on Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy (TIGE) which ran for a decade till 2016. The global financial crisis of 2008, with the threat of a great depression, struck at the core of financial markets.

‘In reality, it was an integrity crisis that demolished our trust in the banking and financial systems,’ says Mohan. ‘The conference theme could not have been more for our times.’

From 2012 to 2018, he served on the International Council of Initiatives of Change (IofC), as Vice-President and later Acting President of IofC International.

‘It was a privilege to work with a global team to launch IofC’s Trustbuilding Program in 2018 and to see it being rolled out in seven countries, in partnership with the Fetzer Institute,’ he says.

Mohan grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The grinding poverty of people living in the slums and the conditions in which factory workers had to work seeded his passion for change. He found a vehicle for this when he encountered IofC in the 1970s. ‘This led me to apologize to my father, resulting in a transformed relationship,’ he says. In his 20s, he dedicated himself to working full-time with IofC.

My aim was to attract a team of young professionals to pursue their dreams for a better, more equitable world.

He worked with IofC in Northern Ireland, Quebec, NE India, Papua New Guinea and Australia. In 1989, he moved into a career in information technology, overseeing business strategy and change management, for a global IT firm based in Melbourne. He and his family had migrated there from Sri Lanka in 1972. In 2006, Mohan returned to work with IofC, heading up the TIGE conferences in Caux.

In their academic book Integral Development (2014), Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem describe Mohan as ‘one of those rare, mature personalities where a strong moral compass is matched with a persistent, calm dedication to service through action. Guided by a strong rootedness in values and a deep spirituality [he is a Roman Catholic], combined with a sense of duty and pragmatism, he brings clarity to the people and contexts he engages with.

[He is] one of those rare, mature personalities where a strong moral compass is matched with a persistent, calm dedication to service through action.

‘Frantic pace and agitation are alien to him, as much as the need to push himself to the front row of life…. He acts more in the background, nurturing and mentoring the people who work with him…. Bhagwandas is a prototype of a “servant leader”.’

The leadership team for the TIGE conferences included young people from India, Sweden, Mexico, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Latvia. ‘My aim,’ says Mohan, ‘was to attract a team of young professionals to pursue their dreams for a better, more equitable world.’

Among the keynote speakers at TIGE were Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN; Lady Susan Rice, then Managing Director of Lloyds Banking Group in Scotland; and R Gopalakrishnan, Director of Tata Sons, India.

In 2020, Mohan joined Earthbanc, which encourages investment in carbon offsetting and was founded by people he had worked with in Caux. ‘We are living at the crossroads of another phase of transformation in the world, post-Covid,’ he says. ‘The smartphone brought communications, business, finance, music and videos into the palm of our hand. The next transformation will be in the care of the ecosystems humanity depends on for survival on Planet Earth. That’s my focus now.’

And he is glad that, thanks to online conferencing, he is radically reducing his carbon footprint.

We are living at the crossroads of another phase of transformation in the world, post-Covid.

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Watch Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy International Conference (2013)

Watch Kofi Annan's keynote speech at TIGE 2013 on Youth Leadership

Watch interview extracts of TIGE 2010

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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 as a young man, TIGE preparation meeting: Mohan Bhagwandas
• Photo at train station: Michael Smith
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change
• Top photo: TIGE session in Caux, July 2010
• Video Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy: Rishab Khanna (YouTube)
• Video Kofi Annan on Youth Leadership: Initiatives of Change Switzerland (YouTube), 2013
• Video Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy International Conference: Initiatives of Change (YouTube), 2013

The pulsing beat of Pakistani rock star Salman Ahmad resounded around the Caux theatre. Ahmad, who is also a doctor and a UN Goodwill Ambassador, was among 25 distinguished Indians and Pakistanis who came to Caux in 2009 with the aim of building bridges between their countries.

As a minister in one of Pakistan’s provincial governments said, ‘The cherished goal of peace, security and development will remain elusive until we learn to trust each other. We have gathered here to forge a coalition of conscience.’

‘Coalition of conscience’ is an unexpected phrase from a politician, but it expressed the aim of the man who initiated the gathering – Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.

In the spirit of his grandfather, Rajmohan has devoted himself to bridging the divides across South Asia. As a professor of history, he knows the tragic cost of conflict between Indians and Pakistanis, between Hindus and Muslims. He knows too that hatred can be healed, and his appeal to all is to search their consciences and discover their role in healing. ‘The choice is not between “our” God and “their” God, for God is one,’ he wrote. ‘The choice is between a wind carrying poison, and the whisper of the one God, intimating his sane counsel to us.’

Caux proved an appropriate venue for the Indian-Pakistani discussion. ‘Caux is, to my mind, unique,’ wrote an Indian journalist. ‘Four days into our stay I finally understood what made it so. It was the absence of envy. We have built an entire world around the glorification of the competitive spirit. For a few days we all left it behind and talked purely as human beings. We all came away a little changed and feeling a lot closer to each other. I hope we will be able to translate it into action.’

We all came away a little changed and feeling a lot closer to each other. I hope we will be able to translate it into action.

Rajmohan first came to Caux in 1956 with members of his family when they were visiting Europe. His father, Devadas Gandhi, managing editor of the Hindustan Times, said at Caux, ‘If Moral Re-Armament [as Initiatives of Change/IofC was then called] fails, the world fails’. Rajmohan followed him into journalism, first as a trainee on The Scotsman in Edinburgh. There he stayed with a family associated with Moral Re-Armament, was attracted by their approach to life, and decided to engage in the same work.

Before long he was leading a March on Wheels from the southern tip of India to Delhi, calling for a ‘clean, strong and united India’ in large rallies along their route. Many young people responded, and he and his colleagues held training camps for them, one of which was in Panchgani in the Maharashtrian hills. In 1964, he launched the weekly news magazine Himmat (meaning courage) which, in his words was ‘a flame speaking truth to power and the street’ and ‘a bridge across divides’. It ran for 17 years.

In 1968 he and his colleagues established a centre, Asia Plateau, in Panchgani. Thousands of Indians have participated in training courses there each year ever since, and many international conferences have taken place, all based on the conviction that everyone can help change their society for the better if they are prepared to start with themselves.

Rajmohan has worked for this better society through many avenues. He has fought for integrity in politics, and served in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. He has constantly used his voice as an academic, journalist and politician to speak for human rights and democracy. A Hindu, he has taken a firm stand against the attempts to treat Muslim Indians as second-class citizens. Several of the 14 books of history and biography he has written focus on the role and condition of the sub-continent’s Muslims.

And across the world he is welcomed, together with his wife Usha. He is an articulate exponent of Mahatma Gandhi’s approach, and his life is pervaded by his grandfather’s values – values which are as relevant today as ever.

Throughout these years Caux and Asia Plateau have cooperated, and the interchange between the centres has strengthened the work of each to create a more inclusive, just and caring society. Indians have brought to Caux their experience of overcoming corruption, healing divisions, bringing justice into unjust situations.

Among those who have done most to build this cooperation have been Rajmohan and Usha Gandhi.

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Watch Caux gives me perspective and renewal: an interview with Prof Rajmohan Gandhi, 2017

Watch Rajmohan Gandhi speak about Kashmir and the India-Pakistan Story (13 September 2019)

Watch a documentary on Asia Plateau which Rajmohan Gandhi helped create

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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 Asia Plateau: Edward Peters
• Photo with Daisy Crowchild: Arthur Strong
• Photo Usha and Rajmohan Gandhi in Caux: John Azzopardi
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change
• Video Caux gave me perspective and renewal: Initiatives of Change Switzerland (YouTube), 2017
• Video Kashmir and the India-Pakistan Story: JCCCVideo (YouTube), 2019
• Video Asia Plateau Documentary: Initiatives of Change India (YouTube), 2020

2008 saw the launch of an unusual course on Islam’s approach to peacemaking, devised by Imam Ajmal Masroor from the UK. The course’s coordinator, Peter Riddell, describes how it came about:

‘My wife and I had an honest conversation in the middle of the night,’ Imam Ajmal Masroor from London told me as he arrived for breakfast in the dining room of the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux. He was attending a training conference in 2007 entitled Tools for Change (T4C), and must have heard the phrase ‘honest conversation’ at its opening session the previous evening.

His brightness suggested that it had been a positive experience – for him at least. Later, his wife arrived with their baby daughter – and they both looked relaxed. So it can’t have gone too badly, I thought.

Then Ajmal said he had a proposal to discuss: Would it be possible for him to deliver a course on peacemaking in Islam for young European Muslims in Caux the next summer, 2008? He had already delivered it in several European countries, but wanted to reach a Europe-wide audience.

He explained that young European Muslims born to first-generation immigrants often felt torn between their parents’ cultural expectations and those of their peers at school or university. Were they European or whatever their parents were? They didn’t feel comfortable or accepted in either culture.

He believed that the answer lay in understanding that the core of Islam is peacemaking. ‘Spread peace among you’ was God’s command in the Quran. ‘Your neighbour is the person whose door is closest to yours,’ said the Prophet Mohammed. An aspect of peacemaking is service, and as you serve the community, you discover that your different identities are not conflicting, but complementary.

We tried the idea out on a group of young Muslims who were attending T4C. Their enthusiasm was evident and those planning the next year’s programme agreed that we could run a pilot. So an adventure began.

An aspect of peacemaking is service, and as you serve the community, you discover that your different identities are not conflicting, but complementary.

The new programme was called Learning to be a Peacemaker (LPM) and the idea was that it would be one of a concurrent series of learning tracks in the week-long T4C conference. Through it, a small group of young Muslims would familiarize themselves with the conference centre in Caux, Initiatives of Change's approach and the content of the LPM course. This would equip them to act as ‘hosts’ for the full course in 2009.

So in late July 2008, 14 young Muslims from France, Sweden, Germany and the UK arrived in Caux.

Ajmal managed to fit in an extraordinary amount of information into the short time frame, including the Islamic principles of peacemaking, the ethics of disagreement, the Prophet Mohammed’s own peacemaking initiatives, violence and extremism, loyalty and citizenship, inner peace and outer peace, and the characteristics of peacemakers – illustrated with personal experiences.

The feedback from the young Muslims was positive: ‘it taught me to be honest, tolerant and open’, ‘my heart is full of hope and my mind full of energy about the young European (Muslim or not) citizens’ future’, ‘an eye-opener to the world’.

The course taught me to be honest, tolerant and open.

The Caux organizers appreciated the graciousness and discipline that the participants brought to the conference – particularly evident as they took part, with other conference participants, in service shifts in the dining room or the kitchen. So the green light was given for a ‘double-bill’ in 2009: participants would take part in the five-day LPM course followed by T4C.  

That year, there were over 50 participants and 15 hosts from seven countries, including non-Muslims for the first time. The BBC World Service sent a reporter, who wrote, ‘This combination of orthodox Islamic teaching and multifaith spirituality is an unusual mix – but it is one the organizers believe reflects the complex European society in which these young Muslims live.’ And the local Swiss newspaper 24 heures asked in their article 'Un workshop international réunit les jeunes musulmans' on 13 August 2009: ‘Could the former Caux Palace today be the place where the reinvention of the difficult and inevitable dialogue between Europe and Islam takes place?’

Though there were five years when the timing of Ramadan prevented it, LPM has been a feature of the Caux conferences ever since. When lockdown came in 2020 and 2021, it went online. Over 180 participants from a wide array of countries and ethnicities have taken part. 

The effect has been profound. ‘It was only when I met people from all over Europe [in Caux] who held me in their hearts, that I came to hold Europe in my heart,’ said Javed Latif, a mechanical engineer from the Netherlands. 

British student Maryam Shah said: ‘Instead of allowing any feeling of isolation or not fitting-in to lead to sadness or violence, we were taught to channel these emotions into something far more constructive: working for the societies that we live in to become more inclusive, understanding and tolerant.’

And Omayma Soltani, a French Muslim post-graduate pharmacist of Tunisian parents, referred to her multiple identities when she said, ‘This course helped me to understand that to be more myself, I had to accept all these parts of me because they are what defines me.’

Looking back at the whole experience, Imam Ajmal comments: ‘Peace inside, peace with people around and peace with God is the foundation of peace-building in Islam. This course is my dream come true, nurturing peace in people!’

This course is my dream come true, nurturing peace in people!

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Watch an interview Marwan Bassiouni, Learning to be a Peacemaker 2018.

Watch the videos of LPM 2009, 2011 and read about LPM 2019 and the reflections of Maryam Shah (2019) and Sabica Pardesi (2020) and discover the report 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 and video: Initiatives of Change

The Algerian diplomat and ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun was President of Initiatives of Change International from 2006 to 2009 and founded the annual Human Security Forum at Caux. Andrew Stallybrass from the UK/Switzerland shared an office with him in Geneva:

Shortly after Mohamed Sahnoun’s election as the President of Initiatives of Change International, he was interviewed on Swiss TV about an autobiographical novel he had just published. I went with him to the studio and sat in the control room with the technicians. They were spellbound by the transparent authenticity of this seemingly uncharismatic person.

During Algeria’s war for independence from France, Mohamed Sahnoun, like many other young nationalists, was arrested by the security forces and tortured in the notorious Villa Suzini. He bore the consequences of those terrible weeks all his life – the beatings and half-drownings left him deaf in one ear.

That vicious war left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced – and a history that is unhealed to this day.

Fifty years after these events, Sahnoun published his novel, Mémoire blessée (Wounded memory). He’d written it for private circulation among friends long before, he said, but it was the 2004 reports of torture in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, that spurred him to share it more widely.

The main protagonist of the novel, Salem (based on Sahnoun) is saved and sheltered by French people – so the book’s title could also be ‘Memory healed’. Anna, a Frenchwoman who helps him, says ‘We must constantly be ready to accept suffering as a forerunner to joy. Childbirth is perhaps the best example of what I mean.’

They were spell-bound by the transparent authenticity of this seemingly uncharismatic person.

As a student in New York, Mohamed Sahnoun helped arrange the first State visit to the USA of the President of newly independent Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella. The visit took place during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis which threatened to plunge the world into nuclear war. Since Ben Bella was going on to Cuba, President Kennedy asked him to be a ‘back channel’ to Cuba’s President, Fidel Castro. That was when Sahnoun first met Kennedy.

This parachuted him into what would become a distinguished diplomatic career. He served successively as Algeria’s Ambassador to Germany, France, the United States, Morocco and the United Nations. He longed for Africa to flourish, and this gave him a passion to resolve the post-colonial border disputes and other conflicts holding back African development.

As Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, he mediated in conflicts widely across Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s. At one time he carried responsibility for UN mediation in five countries and the only time he slept was on planes travelling between them. He refused to take anti-malarial medication because he found it dulled him at a time when his alertness could be crucial to a successful mediation.

His empathy with all sides made him remarkably effective. In retirement in Geneva, he once joined a meeting of 200 peacemakers in the city’s Maison de la Paix. Immediately the chairman interrupted the meeting saying, ‘May I draw your attention to the presence of a man who has resolved more conflicts than most of us have even heard of.’

May I draw your attention to the presence of a man who has resolved more conflicts than most of us have even heard of.

Sahnoun was passionate about Caux’s potential as a meeting place for those grappling with the challenges of war, poverty and environmental destruction. At a time when Western powers were focusing on the ‘war on terrorism’ he believed the real issue was not a clash of civilizations, but a lack of security in its fullest sense – embracing all the conditions for a good life. He founded and chaired the Caux Forum for Human Security, which took place annually from 2008 to 2012.

The Forum brought together politicians, diplomats, academics, journalists, fieldworkers, business people and artists to explore the root sources of human security and build a worldwide coalition of conscience on these issues.

The causes of insecurity operated on two levels, Sahnoun said. ‘On one hand, social breakdown, war, the humiliation of whole peoples, the unequal distribution of wealth… And on the other, this solid, tenacious block inside each of us made of bitterness and conflict, which kills hope and faith, and holds us back from renewal.

Solving the conflicts of tomorrow demands a diplomacy that integrates the art of really listening to people and taking into account their hurts.

‘To find a preventive strategy for the root causes of insecurity and help manage conflicts and save millions of lives will require unprecedented trust and collaboration among all nations and actors.

‘Humanity cannot avoid this kind of change that starts with each one of us, and that implies a personal challenge and learning to listen. Solving the conflicts of tomorrow demands a diplomacy that integrates the art of really listening to people and taking into account their hurts. Without this, there is no defusing the time-bomb of humiliation.’

Mohamed Sahnoun died in 2018, back in Algeria. For me, he was a Mahatma – a great soul.

Mohamed Sahnoun leaves behind the memory of a very wise man. There have been very few men like him.

- Cornelio Sommaruga -

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Watch an interview with Mohamed Sahnoun at the 2011 Caux Forum for Human Security

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Read more:

• Read an interview with Mohamed Sahnoun by the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, 2011
• Healing Memories: An Exchange With Peacemaker Mohamed Sahnoun, by Katherine Marshall, Huffpost 10.05.2011
• Peace, Bread and Health, by Mohamed Sahnoun, For A New World, 2006
• Remembering Mohamed Sahnoun, by Cornelio Sommaruga, 2018
• Commemoration of the life of Mohamed Sahnoun, 2019

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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: Initiatives of Change Switzerland
• Photos (except portrait and with Katherine Marshall): Initiatives of Change
• With Katherine Marshall: photographer unknown
• Portrait: photographer unknown

Zeke Reich is a psychotherapist at a community mental health clinic in Washington DC. He vividly recalls an encounter at the Initiatives of Change conference centre at Caux which changed his perspective on life forever:

I first went to Caux as a 23-year-old New Yorker, excited about the experience but hardly prepared for it. I lived in an insular world, surrounded by friends who were white, elite, and secularly Jewish. Neither spirituality nor diversity had a comfortable place in our world – and I was good at avoiding discomfort.

I appreciated the spiritual experience of being at Caux, which deepened my connection to my own religious background, and generally speaking I appreciated the intercultural one too.

I made friends, revised preconceptions, and opened up to people whose lives and cultures differed dramatically from mine.

But when I was with conference participants from North Africa or the Middle East, I was unable to extend this openness. Almost without being aware of it, I imagined that as a Jewish person I was viewed as culpable for the actions of the state of Israel.

Unable either to defend Israeli policy or tolerate criticism of it, I kept my distance from people from the region and kept my heart walled off by fear.

I kept my heart walled off by fear.

Things came to a head during my third summer at Caux, in 2006, when war broke out between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. A man from Beirut was unable to return home, and participants from the region were in turmoil. I and other Jewish Americans at Caux felt like the eyes of the entire conference were on us and that, for many people, we had become representatives of ‘the enemy’.

My first instinct was to keep my distance even more: maintain my walls, avoid discomfort, let fear stay in control. But I was thwarted by the spirit of Caux – that is, by the persistent encouragement of two white-haired women from different continents who would not let me avoid the challenge of honest dialogue.

And so it was that I found myself sitting in a quiet corner of the main hall with a Gazan woman, someone I had known – and successfully distanced myself from – on previous visits to Caux. I readied myself for debate, as though hearing her views without rebutting them would have meant betraying every one of my ancestors.

I just want you to listen.

But rather than starting a debate, the woman said, ‘I would like you to listen to what it’s like for me back at home. You don't have to agree with everything I say, but you don't have to defend yourself either. I just want you to listen.’ For the first time, I began to allow my walls to come down.

She described Israeli helicopters flying over her home, sleepless nights waiting for explosions, daily bursts of helpless rage – incontrovertible facts about her life. Suddenly questions of politics and blame were irrelevant: this was the truth of her experience, which I could appreciate and care about instead of focusing on my own fear of being blamed.

After that night, a whole world opened up. I played soccer with a group of Tunisians, took a walk with the man from Beirut, and woke up at 4 am to attend prayer with Egyptian Muslims. I started to see each person as an individual, not a representative of a whole region; and in turn I stopped imagining that I was seen solely as Israel’s emissary.

At the same time, I was the first Jewish person some of my new friends had ever met. As I described Jewish values and sang traditional Friday night blessings, I delighted not only in sharing my spirituality but in connecting with it more deeply myself.

I started to see each person as an individual, not a representative of a whole region.

At the end of the conference there was a time of sharing about the week, and I raised my hand. I talked about the fear that had ruled me and I asked my friends to forgive me for my defensiveness.

As I spoke, I felt my body taken over by two sensations, unfamiliar yet strangely comfortable: my feet pressing into the floor and my heart bursting with fullness. I had never been so grounded in my own spiritual heritage – and, at the same time, I had never been so willing to connect with others, across what had once been walls of fear.

Read more about the Tools for Change conference which Zeke attended in Caux in 2006

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Watch Zeke speak at the Tools for Change conference in Caux, 2006 (from 9"23')

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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.

• Portrait: Joanna Margueritte
• All other photos: Initiatives of Change
• Video Howard Grace Report Caux 2006: IofC & For a new world Archives

Peter Riddell works for Initiatives of Change in the United Kingdom and has accompanied peacemakers in the Somali diaspora for over 15 years. He describes a key encounter which took place in summer 2005 at Caux:

‘There are two people in the Somali delegation whose names include Omar,’ said the man from the allocation team at the Initiatives of Change conference centre in Caux. ‘As we didn’t have any information about them, we’ve put them in the same bedroom. I hope that’s all right?’ Though I was one of the hosts of the delegation, I didn’t have any further information either. So I nodded.

In fact, it could have been very un-all right. It transpired that Omar Salad Elmi was a former provincial governor and member of parliament, belonging to the Hawiye clan, while his room-mate, former member of parliament Mohamed Abukar Omar, belonged to the Benadir community. The Hawiye had violently expelled the Benadir from the capital city, Mogadishu, at the beginning of the civil war in 1991. But things turned out in a way that could not have been anticipated.

The story goes back to 1994, when Osman Jama Ali, a former government minister living in the UK, attended a meeting of potential peacemakers in Sweden organized by Initiatives of Change (IofC) and was deeply affected.

In 2004, just after resigning as Deputy Prime Minister of a transitional government which failed to establish its authority, he declared that he wanted to give the rest of his life to ‘reconcile my people’. He invited Dr Ahmed Sharif Abbas from the Benadir community and Abdi Afrah Gure from the Hawiye clan to work with him.

Together they gathered leaders of Somalia’s major clans in the UK diaspora at a workshop at IofC’s London centre in March 2005. In a remarkably short time, they achieved consensus on the situation in their country and set up a charity, which they called Somali Initiative for Dialogue and Democracy (SIDD). That August, they brought 20 senior Somalis from different clans to Caux: 10 of them nominated by the Somali Prime Minister.

‘The peaceful and honest spirit prevailing at Caux prompted us to initiate amongst ourselves a new kind of frank and sincere conversation,’ Omar Salad recalled later. ‘Although most of us had known each other for many decades, we had never had such discussions. We cleared a cloud of ambiguity and mistrust from amongst us.’

The peaceful and honest spirit prevailing at Caux prompted us to initiate amongst ourselves a new kind of frank and sincere conversation.

In a plenary meeting, Omar Salad apologized to the Benadir present for the actions of his clan – the first time such an apology had been made. The Benadir were so touched that they invited a senior elder, Sayid Ma’alow, who was living in Switzerland, to come to Caux to receive the apology. Sayid Ma’alow had vowed never to speak to anyone from the clans which had committed the atrocities, but he eventually agreed to come.

Omar Salad shook his hand and said, ‘I am an ex-member of the community whose militia committed crimes against you, your family and community, and I want to have a word with you.’ Sayid Ma’alow hesitated, and then agreed to hear him out. 

‘Although I personally disagree with the atrocities my ex-community’s militia did to you,’ Omar Salad said, ‘on behalf of that community I ask you to forgive me for that offence done to you, your family and community.’

After a moment’s silence Sayid Ma’alow thanked him for his courage and sincerity. ‘I can only accept your apology on a personal basis,’ he continued. ‘It is up to both communities to come together and talk about how to resolve the problem.’ The two men agreed that they would work together for reconciliation, peace and justice in Somali society.

The two men agreed that they would work together for reconciliation, peace and justice in Somali society.

This was a significant event in the development of a network of senior Somalis, dedicated to rebuilding their country, in the UK diaspora. Omar Salad returned to Somalia and became a noted peacemaker, dedicated to reconciling the clans. Over 60 clan leaders took part in dialogue facilitation courses, so as to ‘help our people talk to each other again’.

With IofC-UK’s support, SIDD’s trustees took many initiatives of reconciliation within the diaspora, while also briefing UK politicians and diplomats, and publishing reports and newpaper articles. When a federal government was established in Somalia in 2012 after 21 years of civil war, some of the SIDD network returned to Somalia, at considerable risk to themselves, to serve as ministers, advisers and diplomats in successive governments.

As for using ‘sharing the same name’ as a criterion for room-allocation in Caux, I don’t recommend it as a general principle. But in this case, it turned out to have been inspired!

Read more:

• Ten Years of Somali Peace-making in Diaspora, by Dr. Ahmed Sharif Abbas and Peter Riddell (2016)
• A Story of Somali Peacemaking in Diaspora, by Peter Riddell (2013)

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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 & Peter Riddell
• Photo top: First meeting of Benadir and Hawiye – anti-clockwise from right: Sayid Ma’alow, Hassan Mohamud Geeseye, Omar Salad Elmi, Mohamed Abukar Haji Omar, n/a, Khalid Maou Abdulkadir, Dr Ahmed Sharif Abbas