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I ended my trip to France by bike on 22 August 2020, in the afternoon, at a secluded high-speed railway station in the middle of the Meuse River department, some forty kilometres from Verdun. It was the first all-bike trip in my life, at the age of 58. Alone. No experience, then. Bad, to have…

In 2020 it will be one hundred years since – on Pierre Ceresole’s initiative – a few volunteers had begun an international service for peace and reconstruction. 100 years of Service Civil International are a reason to celebrate, to look forward but also to look back upon our long history of international voluntary service for…

Many people would call us weird or crazy: while it is was beautiful autumn-weather in Switzerland, nine SCI-activists chose to work voluntary inside the archives of SCI, located in the local library of La-Chaux- de-Fonds. Our aim was to do research for the planned publication on occasion of the 100th anniversary of SCI.

I recently got approached by a student from England who is writing her Master Thesis on SCI’s past involvement in Southern Africa. She was interested in a brochure by Franco Perna with the title “SCI involvement in Africa” – and luckily enough I found an extra copy of the brochure I could send to England…

“33 years SCI, 10 jaar VIA” says the cover of “het JUBELboekje!”, drawn in black and blue and, at least to my taste which is around half a generation younger than the one of its makers, making a rather depressing and not at all jubilating impression. VIA, the Dutch branch of SCI, indeed has been…

It has been more than three years now that I started to present various objects in the From the Archives section of this E-zine. I have written on printed brochures and reports, medals, calendars, resource packs, handwritten workcamp diaries and even a postcard: All kinds of remarkable objects I had expected to attract the readers’…

The diary, or pocket calendar, issued by SCI Switzerland since 1953 (https://archives.sci.ngo/sci-pocket-calendar.html) is pretty famous among SCI folks all over the world. Probably less people are aware that also the Nepalese SCI branch once issued a booklet called Diary with Directory 2002 – celebrating the International Volunteers’ Year of 2001.I assume that this issue has…

My recent encounter with these nice small objects from SCI’s remote past has been indirectly triggered by a visit to the International Secretariat (IS) in Antwerpten a few weeks ago: When I mentioned that due to the digitalisation of most of SCI’s everyday documents (proceedings, correspondence, pictures, videos), the International Archives would put a stronger…