Our History

The CISV Australia story began in 1979 when a returning Australian diplomat brought a full set of CISV documentation back from Stockholm. This documentation, which included an invitation to send a promotional delegation of 11 year olds to a Village in Tokyo, Japan, ended up at Geelong Grammar School.

 

Kirsten Trethowan saw the CISV brochures and took them home and her father, Neville, who made further enquiries of the school about their intention to fill the delegation. The school were not planning any official response so Neville received permission to organise and lead a delegation himself.

 

Several informal meeting were organised between September and December 1980 and finally an open meeting was held on December 9, 1980. At this meeting a committee was formed and CISV Australia was officially born with the creation of the Geelong Chapter.

 

Since then a Chapter was formed in Melbourne and another one in Perth. In more recent times, the Melbourne Chapter merged with the Geelong Chapter. In 2008, a development group was formed in Sydney with the aim to have a fully operational Chapter in Sydney in late 2009.

 

Today CISV operates in over 60 countries and since 1951 there has been 206,707 people who have participated in 5372 international activities.

You can find out more about the history of CISV from the International website.