Core Team

• Mohamed Sahnoun, Founder and Chair
• Dick Ruffin, Executive and Financial Director
• John Bond, Forum Coordinator
• Janyce Konkin, Project Manager
• Roberta Méan, Director of Caux Forum Secretariat
• Erik Parsons, Communications Director
• Andrew Stallybrass / Philipp Thüler, Media Contacts

The Caux Forum for Human Security is organized by Initiatives of Change International and hosted in partnership with CAUX-Initiatives of Change.

Initiatives of Change International (IofC International) is a non-government organization (NGO) working for peace, reconciliation and human security worldwide. It has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, and Participatory Status at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. It stresses the importance of personal responsibility, ethical leadership and building trust across the world’s divides. Its President is Rajmohan Gandhi. Based in Caux, Switzerland, IofC International was founded in 2002 as an association bringing together the autonomous national bodies of the Initiatives of Change movement which are active in 39 countries, many of them over several decades.

IofC International represents the universality and multifaith character of the movement, and facilitates its relationships with the United Nations and other international organizations through its Geneva office. Its Office of Training Services in Geneva connects the training capacities of the worldwide movement with needs identified by the UN and other international agencies.

IofC International has operational responsibility for Initiatives of Change’s global communications and facilitates collaboration between IofC national bodies. Certain trans-national programmes of the Initiatives of Change movement also operate under its auspices.

In 2008 IofC International launched the Caux Forum for Human Security at the movement’s international conference centre in Caux. The Forum is a global resource for those working for peace and human security at all levels. www.iofc.org

CAUX-Initiatives of Change is a charitable Swiss Foundation. In addition to sharing the aims of the network, it owns and manages the Caux centre, for over 60 years home to international conferences.

In 1946, the former Caux-Palace Hotel opened its doors to the world as an international conference centre for Initiatives of Change. From 1946 to 1950, Germans and French met at Caux in a spirit of reconciliation. In the next years, Caux also became a meeting place for leaders from emerging nations.

Sixty years on, each Northern summer, the Caux assembly draws between 1400 and 2000 people of all walks of life, of every generation, background and religious outlook to be part of a continuous series of conferences dealing with specific subjects. In recent years, meetings have been held between individuals and opposing groups from Lebanon, Cambodia, Burundi, Somalia and South Africa. Caux has also hosted dialogues between ethnic groups from inner cities. And it is here where many Initiatives of Change programmes are developed. The centre is partly funded by the lease of sections of the Caux facility to a hotel management school for 10 months of the year. The Foundation is also a founding member of IofC International. www.caux.ch

Funding

We are grateful for generous support the Forum has received from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the Irene Prestwich Trust (UK), Initiatives of Change national bodies and many individuals. We are grateful too for the immense amount of pro-bono work which has made the Forum possible.