On 16 June 2016, on the fortieth anniversary of the June 16, 1976 Soweto riots that became known as “Youth Day” in South Africa, a unique youth programme was launched at a unique place called Volmoed, close to Hermanus.

The programme founders, Edwin Arrison and John de Gruchy, had big dreams: to let it be a place and programme where young Christian leaders from across the globe could gather to be trained in order to be sent back to their various communities. It soon became clear that our impact would actually be limited if we spread ourselves too thinly and tried to do too much, but we continued to gather young people for 9 to 10 weeks, until 2019.