‘Gaia-Movement Trust Living Earth Green World Action’
Clothes collections
Linke have been restored
Material needs updating
‘Gaia Movement Trust’ is a name attached by the Teachers Group to various ‘charity’ used clothing collection businesses. In the United States, it is a company based in Chicago which is putting out hundreds of clothes boxes throughout the USA. In Britain, students are invited to take part in the ‘Gaia movement’, leafletting and sorting old clothes. Gaia advertises that it collects ‘for the environment’, but there is no evidence that it supports any actual environmental work and it is associated with a Swiss-based private trust.
TOP US MEDIA REPORTS
12th February 2004
The Green Bins of Gaia (Chicago Tribune special investigation)
By David Jackson and Monica Eng. A very well researched two-part special focusing on Chigaco’s Gaia recycling bins, that also provides a detailed analysis of the Teachers Group and exposes the links between Gaia and Planet Aid. Gaia’s clothing collection business flourishes in Chicago, but its promises to promote the environment are questionable. Meanwhile, the organization’s leaders are under criminal indictment in Europe.
December 2006
Behind the Green Box (CBS 5, San Francisco)
TV report by Anna Werner. In this season of giving, a new charity in the Bay Area is welcoming volunteers and clothing donations through its green-colred bins with the friendly Gaia label. But behind the green box, investigative reporter Anna Werner uncovers a Danish organization. (No longer online)
GAIA’S CLAIMS
This is the message that appeared on Gaia boxes when they began appearing in around 2000.
The Gaia-Movement Trust Living Earth Green World Action
What exactly is behind this strange name, and why is there a Swiss flag on the box? When we investigated in 2000, we found the Gaia-Movement Trust to be located in a rented room at the World Trade Centre building in Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland is of course a notorious base for secret ‘hot money’ transactions, and the Teachers Group has several trusts and companies here.
We spoke then to a lawyer handling their affairs. Mail was then being forwarded to a Humana address in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, also a mail box. This man told us then there was no sign of any charity work. With one exception, all but one of the trustees were Teachers Group members.
The ‘environmental projects’
What are these environmental projects? How much of Gaia’s profit is actually spent on them? We are extremely sceptical of Gaia’s claims to be any kind of genuine environmental movement.
Recent postings on the Gaia-movement web site, for example, claim one of the beneficiaries is an environmental reserve in Brazil. In fact, the property they refer to is commercial a fruit and eucalyptus plantation, Fazenda Jatoba, owned by the Teachers Group through its Jersey-based offshore company Fairbank, Cooper and Lyle. As far as we know there has never been an independent audit of any of Gaia’s ‘environmental projects’. We feel it is likely that any money or ‘volunteers’ despatched to Brazil, for example, would simply contribute to running a commercial farm.
In the past, supposed environmental projects investigated by the police have turned out to be elaborate fronts for money laundering. According to the 2001 Danish police report, the Teachers Group used front companies and bogus ‘environmental charities’ (that did not exist at all) in Paris, Malaysia and Fiji to illegally transfer money out of charity funds to buy property. According to this report, that the Brazilian plantation is simply a commercial enterprise.
THE SWISS TRUST
Gaia-Movement Trust Living Earth Green World Action is registered as “a private Swiss ‘association’, founded in May 1998 with an address in an office building near Geneva airport.
All but one of its ten founding trustees are senior Teachers Group members. They include two, Jonas Israel and Søren Sørensen, on our list of the top 30 Teachers Group members. Israel runs a forestry company in Malaysia, McCorry Limited, and Sørensen manages commercial plantations in Belize.
Hot money: In Britain, Gaia and Green World Recycling Ltd (both Teachers Group entities) pay royalties to the Swiss trust for the use of the Swiss flag logo.
PIRATING OF ‘GAME MANAGEMENT AFRICA’
Game Management Africa by Mike La Grange is a paperback manual on how to manage, feed and transport wild animals. It is rather a practical volume, printed on cheap paper, full of photographs of elephants, wildebeest and hippopotami – the sort of reference book you might find in the office of a zoo. Mike La Grange is (or in 2000, was) a well known safari park manager in Zimbabwe.
A copy of Game Management Africa was found by chance by a contact at one of the clothes recycling companies in the UK in 1999. The striking thing about this copy of the book is that it is prominently badged on the front cover with the Gaia-Movement Trust Living Earth Green World Action logo and Swiss flag, with the words ‘A GAIA Movement Production’. It gives the clear impression that the book is a joint production between Gaia and Mr La Grange.
The trouble is that it is not. It now appears that the edition of the book is a ‘pirate copy’ – or at least that Gaia’s claims to joint authorship are misleading. We managed to contact Mike La Grange. Over a crackly mobile phone line from Zimbabwe, he confirmed that he is the suthor of the book. But he had never heard of GAIA and he could not recall any agreement with anyone to publish a special copy of the book. After a moment’s thought, however, he recalled having met ’some Danes’ in Harare, who had paid him a certain amount of money to reproduce the material.
We do not know why Gaia-Movement Trust Living Earth Green World Action would want to claim authorship of a book on game management. Being apparently joint authors of a scholarly work on game management would, of course, be a very useful tool for fundraising and gaining credibility for an organisation claiming to be an environmental and wildlife charity.
The only connection between wildlife in Zimbabwe and the Teachers Group that we are aware of are reports that there is a small animal park at the Humana People-to-People headquarters in Shamva, Zimbabwe.
GAIA IN THE USA
Who runs Gaia in the USA?
Eva Nielsen. When we last investigated, the CEO of Gaia in Chicago was Eva Nielsen, who has been with the Teachers Group for more than 30 years, and was one of the original signatories of the financial fund Faelleseje in 1977. According to the records, she is a former teacher at Tvind schools and subsequently a project leader in Honduras, Armenia, Africa and India.
Helle Lund. Another leading manager, Helle Lund, was the company secretary and a director of Humana UK in 1997, when it was closed down by the British Charity Commission.
GAIA IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Links with Green World and other companies
Gaia in the UK does not appear to have a formal company registration and is not a registered charity. It is run in close association with other Teachers Group used clothes in the UK, Planet Aid, DAPP UK, and Green World Recycling, and the Teachers Group college CICD.
It is especially linked to a company called Green World Recycling Ltd. The Gaia logo and Swiss flag appear on Green World recycling Boxes on roadsides throughout England, and Green World was making exactly the same environmental claims as Gaia in the USA when its boxes started appearing in Britain in around 1998.
Volunteers attracted to volunteer for ‘the Gaia movement’ in the UK have described being made to work for long hours in terrible conditions putting out leaflets and collecting and sorting used clothes. At various times ‘Gaia’ has accommodated students in extremely basic conditions in houses in Stockton, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham.
OTHER REPORTS
Chico, California: The Gaia clothing bins may be easy to use, but their environmental impact has been questioned (News Review, Chico.com, 19th November 2009)
Sonoma Index-Tribune (14th Sept 2004) Bins Fund Siskiyou Nonprofit. By Sarah Berkley. Story questioning link between Gaia clothes bins in California and CCTG.
Wisconsin State Journal: Recycling Group Meets Resistance (7th April 2002)
The Independent on Sunday (UK): Charity’s recycling claims mislead public (17th December 2000)
Do you have information on a TG company? Tell us.
Revised: 28th February 2010
