Learning to ask good questions: will the 21st century see as much human suffering as the 20th? Not if the graduates of the Caux Scholars Program have anything to do with it.

Sam Doe, a Liberian raised in poverty amidst the ravages of prolonged civil war, directs the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, based in Accra, Ghana. Tanya Peric, a Bosnian whose father is Croatian and mother Serbian, was twice a refugee of the Balkan wars and now works to protect the rights of Europe's gypsy minority at the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest. Zack Rothschild, an American from a well-to-do mid-western family, is working with Mercy Corps in Kosovo helping coordinate humanitarian aid.

These young professionals have one thing in common. They are all graduates of the Caux Scholars Program (CSP), a month-long course in conflict transformation. For eight years it has drawn talented young men and women from all over the world to a Swiss centre for reconciliation to learn more about peacemaking. Perched on a mountain-side high above Lake Geneva in the village of Caux, the centre, run by Moral Re-Armament, has been a beacon of hope for the world for over 50 years.

Many of the students, like Sam and Tanya, have been personally scarred by conflicts in their home countries. Others, like Zack, were on track for successful careers in a variety of fields and simply longed to find ways to make more of a difference in the world. All were highly motivated to learn how to play a part in bringing healing both in personal and community conflicts and to people traumatized by war.

Amy Potter, for instance, came to Caux from Principia College in the US `fairly certain' that she wanted to pursue a career in conflict resolution. Taking part in the programme `cemented my desire', she says. She went on to work with the Iowa Peace Institute in America's heartland.

Amy says that the close personal relationships that developed during the programme have helped her in her work. `Knowing people I deeply appreciate and respect who have lived through destructive conflicts, or are actively working to prevent them, gives me more motivation and sincerity. With sincerity comes the realization that I can't only teach conflict resolution skills, I need to live them. This has made all the difference in the quality of my work.'

Similarly, Patrick McNamara had decided to pursue a master's degree in conflict analysis and resolution when he enrolled in the programme in 1996. He saw it as a way of making a transition from community-based mediation to resolving conflict in a global context. After obtaining his degree, Patrick joined the Western Justice Resource Center, a conflict resolution organization in Los Angeles, and became a trainer and facilitator with Hope in the Cities, a programme of interracial dialogue in US cities.

Patrick, a Christian, has married Aviva, who is Jewish. `Today, my interfaith dialogues extend beyond just the community conference table to my own dinner table,' he says. `This builds on the taste of religious diversity that I experienced in Caux.' He adds, `The CSP widened my eyes, deepened my practice and grew my network to do better what I am meant to do: be a peacemaker in the world.'

During their month together, Caux Scholars learn how to analyze conflict; examine cage studies brought by their fellow students, faculty and guest lecturers; and practise skills of facilitation, negotiation and mediation. They are aided by a variety of surprisingly realistic role-playing exercises.

For example Sam Doe, who was partly impelled into attending the CSP by witnessing a young child die in the street, has returned each summer to help teach. One year he created a simulation of a peace negotiation, drawing on the history of the Liberian conflict. Students assumed the roles of both antagonists and mediators. When a photographer knowledgeable about Liberia arrived to take some photos of the programme, he thought he was witnessing a real life negotiation.

Tanya, the Bosnian working on Roma rights, is one of a number of students from Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. They have helped their fellow Caux Scholars to better appreciate the historic roots of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and also to care personally for the people of the region and for its future. Tanja had fled with her mother and sister from her home in Tuzla in the early Nineties, settling in Novi Sad, Serbia. She says, `Peacebuilding, or--as I would modestly call it--crossing the bridges, seems to me to be a natural choice for someone born in Bosnia in an ethnically mixed family. The CSP was my first chance to meet young people from all over the world who shared a similar vision.

`Since then I have studied interfaith relations and human rights in Switzerland, the US and South Africa. Through my current work, I am frying to cross the gap between my own, non-Romani community, and the other group. At the CSP, I learnt how to deal with prejudice, acquired skills in cross-cultural communication, and made wonderful friends who have been an important network of advisers and supporters in many a difficult moment.'

One such difficult moment was last spring, when Serbian cities were being bombed at the height of the Kosovo conflict. Graduates and faculty from the CSP kept in touch with the students from Serbia through e-mail messages and phone calls, offering support, a word of humour, or just a vent through which pain and anger could be expressed. The CSP invited its six graduates from Serbia to return to Caux for a week this August, and five, including Tanja, accepted. They found refreshment, wider perspectives and hope, and began the process of reconciliation with individuals from the NATO countries and with a refugee from Prystina, Kosovo, currently living in Sweden.

Zach, the American working in Kosovo with Mercy Corps, looks back on the road that led him there after he `came down the mountain' from Caux in 1996. `Returning to Drew University, I tried to use what I had learned at Caux as a moral and political compass, organizing a walkathon fundraiser for peace in places of genocide. Following graduation, I headed off to Washington DC, where I worked for FINCA International, a micro-credit organization dedicated to fighting poverty worldwide through tiny loans. My work included five weeks of research in Kyrgyzstan.

`I now find myself in Kosovo, working for Kosovo's oldest international NGO--and one of its largest--coordinating food and non-food aid, health, agriculture, economic development, and civil society initiatives. I feel that Caux has strengthened one of the most useful things I can do here: ask good questions--a key to navigating all the surprises that Kosovo has to offer.'

The CSP's impact on its graduates owes much to a faculty that has offered a rare combination of academic credentials and field experience. Barry Hart, the CSP's Academic Director, researched his doctoral thesis working with victims of trauma in Liberia. He has also spent four years in former Yugoslavia, developing programmes for schools, working with women who have lost husbands or sons, or who have been raped, and facilitating ecumenical dialogues. He teaches at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia.

Another faculty member, Dr Mohammed Abu-Nimer, teaches in the School of International Service at American University in Washington DC and conducts workshops in conflict resolution in Gaza. Out of his work there, two teachers have come from Gaza to take part in the Caux programme.

Farooq Hassan, an international lawyer from Pakistan who has years of experience working with the UN, has talked to the students about formal international instruments for resolving conflict. And former US diplomats Harold Saunders and Joseph Montville have included students in work they are doing to create consensus through dialogue in Tajikistan or to further the healing process in the Middle East.

While daily headlines face us with the gory details of the cost of human conflict--whether it stems from unhealed history, economic injustice, or deep seated prejudice--and other voices decry the purposelessness and self-indulgence of young people, this small and little known programme sends a steady stream of young men and women out into the world to bring healing. They not only take their skills and learning with them, but they also train others and play a creative role in developing a committed global network of peacemakers who support and encourage one another.