Dunant was born in 1828 in Switzerland. He was born of wealthy parents, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so to speak. He could have lived a life of lazy luxury.
Yet, Dunant was a caring, compassionate young man who visited the sick & poor. As a young man he established an organization in Switzerland called, "The Young Men’s Christian Union," designed to help teenage boys.
When he became an adult he went into business on his own, & did very well. One day he had an appointment with Napoleon III, whose armies were at war in Italy.
Dunant traveled to Italy to meet with Napoleon III. But on the way he passed the latest battlefield & saw the atrocities of war. He looked at bayonets & guns rusting in the mud. He saw the bodies of 40,000 soldiers, most of them dead, but some of them still alive. He heard their cries of agony & pain. Some were cursing as they breathed their last breath of life.
Dunant couldn’t turn away from that. He went to the nearest town & persuaded the townspeople to turn the church into a first-aid station. He persuaded citizens to help him & they took stretchers & went out into the battlefield & brought the wounded back.
He worked side by side with the doctors for three weeks, with almost no sleep - ministering to the wounded & to their needs.
Dunant finally went home, but he couldn’t forget what he had experienced. So he started writing - to this nation & to that - to all the influential people he knew & to others.
Finally, one day in Geneva, Switzerland, to an international gathering, he presented a resolution that we know today as the Geneva Convention, signed by 22 nations, granting immunity to doctors & nurses & ambulances so that they could go out into the
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