page_title: Service Civil International
section_title: Evolution of the idea workcamp
hierarchical_section_title: Service Civil International / History / Evolution of the idea workcamp
caption_attribution_description: Service Civil International English: Pierre Ceresole on a workcamp in Brynmawr, Wales, 1931. Français&#160;: Pierre Ceresole sur le chantier de Brynmawr au Pays de Galles, en 1931.
context_page_description: Service Civil International is an international peace organisation. Since 1920, it organises international volunteering projects in the form of workcamps and it was the first organisation worldwide to do so. The organisation was founded by Swiss pacifist Pierre Cérésole in the aftermath of World War I in order to foster understanding and a culture of peace between people from different countries.
context_section_description: From 1931 on, the SCI idea evolved and the concept of workcamps with international volunteers were applied in other areas of social commitment During the economic crisis of the coal mining industry in Wales, a workcamp was organised to restore self-confidence in distressed mining town of Brynmawr (Wales, Great Britain). Volunteers and unemployed men build a swimming pool and layout a public park. 
  Cérésole, who was inspired by Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and who had met Gandhi in 1931, wanted to spread the idea of workcamps to India. Through the support of British Quakers and friends of Gandhi, among them Charles Freer Andrews, he could set up the first workcamp in India in 1934 to do disaster relief work in the Bihar region, affected by the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. The project had only four European participants and the concept of organising workcamps as international reconciliation proved difficult to translate to a colonial context, where white Europeans would be identified with the colonizing power.
  In 1937, SCI was mandated by a group of aid organizations  to give humanitarian help for refugee children during the Spanish Civil war (1936-1939). Evacuation services and food and clothing distribution were carried out in the part of the Spanish Republic. Twenty years later, humanitarian help was given to war orphans in Tunisia during the Algerian War (1958-1962). Besides those two projects, humanitarian help never got any further importance in SCI.
caption: Pierre Cérésole sitting amidst children at Brynmawr
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