Colombia is a nation that has known bloody civil wars and where, since 1965, guerrillas have ruled part of the country, intimidating the other part by extortion, kidnapping, murder and sabotage.

Janet Paine looks back on ten years of an initiative to foster democratic values in Eastern and Central Europe

The summer at Caux began with a conference run by young people, mostly from former Soviet Bloc countries, with a smaller number from West Europe and North America, Mexico and an international group from the Swiss association, Youth Exchanges for Peace.

Some of the younger people attending the Caux conferences tell FAC about experiences that have changed their lives.

Over the last seven years, hundreds of young people have taken part in courses on the values which undergird true freedom, run by MRA's Foundations for Freedom programme. Anna Christine Christensen from Denmark first took part in 1994. She caught up with participants new and old at the first of this summer's conferences in Caux, Switzerland.

Elvyra Kucinskaite is Chief Editor of the Lithuanian Catholic monthly magazine, 'Sandora'

What happens when people with a common cause disagree about the way forward? Trade unions, political parties, churches, lobby groups and charities all face this dilemma from time to time. Some groups delay a decision and become absorbed in internal wrangling; others split. Mary Lean explores the experience of MRA in Britain, which has recently sold the Westminster Theatre.

Grim realism has replaced the euphoria of 1991 in Ukraine, as in most countries of the former Soviet Union. On a recent visit to Ukraine, Mike Lowe discovered that democracy must start at the grassroots