Service Civil International

Service Civil International (SCI) is an international non-governmental voluntary service organisation and peace movement with 43 branches and groups worldwide. The organisation was founded in 1920 by Swiss engineer Pierre Cérésole. It is also known as International Voluntary Service in a number of English-speaking countries and as Voluntary Service International in Ireland.

SCI states to base its work on the following values:

SCI believes that all people are capable of living together with mutual respect and without recourse to any form of violence to solve conflicts. It organises international volunteer projects all over the world because it believes that peace can only be built if people with different backgrounds and cultures learn to co-operate and work together.

SCI was born out of a passionate search for peace, immediately after World War I. Taking part in the first International Conference of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1920 in Bilthoven,Pierre Cérésole, a Swiss radical pacifist initiated a peace project with volunteers from different countries in France.

The first international workcamp took place on the former battle field of Verdun (France) in 1920 in order to reconstruct the war-damaged village Esnes-en-Argonne and being a symbol of reconciliation between France and Germany. Among the small group of international volunteers were also three German volunteers. They built temporary homes for the villagers and cleared the farm land.

In 1924, Cérésole organised a second international workcamp in Les Ormonts (Switzerland), which helped to clear rubble after an avalanche. This service was promoted as a model service for conscientious objectors, in order to support a political campaign to introduce an alternative service. In the following years more relief services were organized. The largest has been in 1928 in Liechtenstein with more than 700 volunteers from 28 countries, which cleared the Rhine valley plain after a heavy flood in 1927.

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