For A Change articles from October 1996

For A Change archives from October 1996

(MRA (Moral Re-Armament) Conference) Caux 1946-1996: looking back with gratitude, looking forward with hope.
October 1, 1996... Aseries of chauffeur-driven limousines snaked their way round the hairpin bends leading up to the small Swiss village of Caux, some 2,000 ft above the Lake of Geneva, on 2 July. Representatives of the Swiss Federal Government, the Canton of...

Man of vision: there would probably be no MRA (Moral Re-Armament) centre at Caux were it not for the inspiration in 1942 of ... Philippe Mottu.
October 1, 1996... Philippe Mottu is in the tradition of Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross. As Genevese and Christians, both men, moved by human suffering, acted decisively in a way that has benefited the world and in so doing added lustre to Switzerland....

Freeing the future from the grip of the past: Caux's history made it the ideal place for a high-level symposium on reconciliation.
October 1, 1996... A Frenchwoman describes the liberation from bitterness towards Germany that her mother found at Caux, 50 years ago; a German recalls what it meant to meet people who had suffered `under us Germans' and were prepared to forgive. A former...

Fleas for children.
October 1, 1996... `Protecting children is the moral litmus test of our humanity,' the President of the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, said in her Jubilee Lecture. The state of the world's children represented both a `triumph' for...

Hope in the cities.
October 1, 1996... In a `borderless world of interconnected, competing cities', local communities have a vital role, maintains Peter Newman, Associate Professor in City Policy at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Newman was one of a panel of speakers from 12...

Note on Moral Re-Armament.
October 1, 1996... (Moral Re-Armament was launched in 1938 when Europe was rearming. Frank Buchman, MRA's American initiator, called for a programme of `moral and spiritual rearmament' to address the root causes of conflict, and work towards a `hatefree,...

Getting ready for the next century: with the millennium approaching, the Dalai Lama and other `prophet voices' met in Caux for a session on `forging the future'.
October 1, 1996... The future is, by definition, unknown. `In politics,' former Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone once remarked, `if you step out an inch ahead it's pitch black.' Can we prepare for the next century--or do we just have to wait for it to happen to...

(MRA Caux) Conference album.
October 1, 1996... Counter clockwise from top: Alpine horns at the Swiss National Day celebration; tap dancers mark the opening of the outdoor stage; the Junior Round Table, part of the Caux industrial conferences, takes a break; Filipino dancers; Ryuzaburo Kaku,...

In the market for peace (Somalia).
October 1, 1996... On the green line between the warring factions in Mogadishu, Somalia, a small sign of hope is being built. Women from different sides of the confict are setting up a market where they can together sell their vegetables and handicrafts. The...

Street children find shelter (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe).
October 1, 1996... Thulani's father forced him to leave home on the accusation of selling four cows which went missing while Thulani was herding them. Thulani began living on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, selling tomatoes. He found the Harare street children...

Back to school (King-Luthuli Transformation Centre, Johannesburg).
October 1, 1996... Each week over a thousand young people come to the King-Luthuli Transformation Centre (KLTC) in central Johannesburg to take part in the Saturday Study Club. There, in an informal atmosphere, the brighter students help the others to catch up...

Time to renew the covenant says Chief Rabbi.
October 1, 1996... The climax of the four-day seminar on `Faith, moral values and the future' was the Jubilee Lecture by Dr Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. In a talk crackling with insight and humour, Dr Sacks...

Weighing the media on the scale of values: a think-tank of media professionals aims to work `from conscience to conscience'.
October 1, 1996... When British publisher William Porter visited Caux in 1990 he had no inkling that it would lead him to create a worldwide network of people in the communications industry concerned about media values. But ever since, Porter, a former chairman...

Film critic sees `emptiness in the soul of Hollywood'.
October 1, 1996... Michael Medved, film critic of the New York Post and author of the controversial bestseller Hollywood versus America, said that any vision of the future depicted in movies--from Mad Max to Blade Runner and Waterworld--was invariably hopeless:...

People-centred job creation in Japan.
October 1, 1996... Japanese financial writer, Yoichiro Ichioka, called on Japan to develop `a people-centred society' in the face of the highest unemployment in the nation's history. Ichioka is Director and Chief Editorial Writer of the Japanese financial...

Time to heal Canada's past.
October 1, 1996... A First Nation Canadian leader, Elijah Harper, called for `a reconciliation journey'. Harper, Member of Parliament for Churchill, Manitoba, was speaking at the session called `Creators of Peace--a women's initiative'. `There's so much pain...

German bishop's call for community.
October 1, 1996... Asession entitled `Europe at the crossroads' set out to identify a specific role for the people of Europe in the next century. The Catholic Bishop of Trier, Germany, Dr Hermann Josef Spital, emphasized the importance of Europe's spiritual...

Never too late to love my father.
October 1, 1996... I was brought up in a typically white middle class, college-educated family. Although we were United Methodist churchgoers, faith in God was something not talked about and for Sunday mornings only. In the middle of my teen years I went...

Too hot to handle (Letter to Wollongong).
October 1, 1996... In Letter to Wollongong, a short masterpiece of theatre by the Czech diplomat Jaroslava David-Moserova, a nurse living in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia writes to her brother who has emigrated to Australia. She recalls the brutal crackdown of...

Job satisfaction ... first visit to Caux.
October 1, 1996... Responding to the tiny advertisement requesting students to work at the conference centre in Caux, Switzerland, was the smartest move I have ever made. Following an interview, where I learnt more about MRA and its objectives, my interest grew....

Forgiveness factor: stories of hope in a world of conflict.
October 1, 1996... In San Salvador a few months ago, I heard a senior administrator at the University of Central America, where six priests were assassinated during the civil war, reflect on the role of forgiveness in healing his nation. `The timing of an amnesty...

Singing for harmony: `I was the white sheep of the family'.
October 1, 1996... Close your eyes and it might be Paul Robeson singing; open them and you see an African-American of the same massive build as the legendary singer. Indeed Joe Carter portrayed Robeson in a musical which ran for two years in San Francisco. ...