Opened in July 1932, the Brynmawr Swimming Pool was the first international voluntary project in Britain. In the summer of 1931, the Religious Society of Friends in Brynmawr, in cooperation with Jean Inebnit, a Swiss quaker and Leeds University lecturer who had previously worked with Pierre Cérésole, founder of the Service Civil International, managed to attract over a hundred volunteers - 41 from abroad and 74 from the UK, 48 of whom were student volunteers - to build an open air pool and a surrounding park on an old rubbish tip. The work was done in two waves by the volunteers, many of whom were drawn from the local unemployed, while the international volunteers came from Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and the United States. Cement to complete the pool was purchased with money donated by the people of Lagarde, France. This was the first project of its kind in the United Kingdom and from this emerged the development of the International Voluntary Service for Peace.

Daryl Leeworthy, RCAHMW, 4 October 2010