Quaker meetings in Switzerland began with individuals who discovered a close affinity to the spiritual quest and ideals of Quakers. They met through their involvement in peace and reconciliation, conscientious objection and service, and, not least, in the Civil Service Movement founded by Pierre Cérésole in the early 1920s. A number of them had been to the Quaker centre at Woodbrooke, in Birmingham, and were subsequently accepted as individual members of London Yearly Meeting. Swiss Quakers held their first annual meeting in Bern in 1934, and continued meeting annually under the umbrella of London Yearly Meeting on whose authority they depended for the admission of new members. In 1938 they acquired the right to admit their own members, and in November 1939 they were recognised as a Regional Meeting. An independent Switzerland Yearly Meeting came into being in 1947.