TVIND ALERT

WITNESS

Richmond Vale Academy, 2007

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March 2007: My name is [omitted] and i am currently “training” as a DI in St Vincent at the Richmond Vale Academy. I am writing to ask you to tell me why you decided to set up your website. I have spoken to our ‘headmaster’ here, Stina Herberg, and she tried to tell us that you were in the TG for 20 years and that you weren’t happy with the common fund and that’s why you left.

Please can you help us out, a few of us are really worried about what’s going on with the money that we are fundraising, and the other day we had visits off some guys at the top of the chain, Tove Pederson, two ladys called Marianne and ava, and also a frail looking gentleman who’s apparently in the TG called Svitt(??). This guy came only at night and wore a cap and sunglasses sometimes. He apparently is living out in the banana farm in St Lucia, but we suspect that it is Amdi Pederson.

We also had a visit off of the lawyer for Humana, well thats what we were told he was a lawyer working on a case over here to do with some banana farms. Poul Jorgensen his name was.

Please can you explain to us exactly why you are doing what you are doing we need facts not opinion obviously.

Thank-yuo for your time and I look forward to your reply.

November 2007: I can inform you that I actually left the project in May and came back to England. There were so many irregularities and so many problems occuring that I no longer wanted toassociate myself with the organisation anymore.

Not only myself but 7 people left the program for the same reasons. There is so much corruption and negative feeling with Humana and associated schools that neither of us could continue.

Those that stayed are currently in Africa at their chosen projects, and as for how they are doing im not so sure.

Best Wishes

WITNESS

Collections manager, Planet Aid Philadelphia, 2006-7

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Thank you very much for your work on this site. My experience with Tvind came through my employment with Planet Aid in the role of Collections Manager in Philadelphia from May, 2006 to June, 2007. What I experienced with Tvind/Planet Aid mirrors much of what this website has already espoused.

Aside from my issues with the cultish nature of the organization and obvious money tracking issues, the most disheartening detail of my experience was with the way they treated the live-in workers that my managers housed. During my employment we had a worker from Africa come to learn the roles of managing and to develop skills for later on. The outcome, in my opinion, was exactly the opposite.

For all intents and purposes she was a slave. She was not allowed to leave their house, disappointing to me because I was anxious to show her how great a city that Philadelphia is and to get her to see the history of the city in relation to America (i.e. the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc.). Just simple trips that everyone who visits Philadelphia for a day should make, let alone someone who lives there for over six months.

She was often forced to work unpaid overtime, beings that they would not allow her to get her drivers license in order to provide her own transportation to work. She was at their mercy to come and leave the office when they did. Often times she would arrive at 8:00 am and stay in the office till 7:00 pm or later with them. The difference being that she was actually doing hard, laborious work while they stayed huddled in an isolated office and played video games and Skyped other Tvind members. She would also work long hours on Saturdays, without extra compensation to my knowledge. The managers, as well as other people in TG, were very good at convincing themselves that they were contributing to something and being productive when they are actually having no impact. This applies from the top on down, from the projects in foreign other countries to actually running the “fundraising” businesses in the US. The “Managers” (2) had no formal training and were often too inept to handle the most simple of managerial tasks. Often times they would pass along the duties to other workers and at the same time demand more their employees. Their inexperience became more apparent during stressful times when tempers would often be lost, leading to one-sided screaming matches to be followed a few hours later by empty apologies.

From a financial aspect, they withheld her pay to contribute to the “Common Fund”, the benefit to her contribution being unclear, and would threaten her by taking away what limited privileges she did have. They also made her pay an exorbitant amount for rent, considering three of them lived together and she had to pay $800/month in a house that cost $1600/month (it should have been split to $535 per person). They also required her to pay $200 per month for food, which only included dinners. I have personally verified this information. She would often be very upset cause her family could not understand why she was unable to send more money back to them in Africa, further heightening the amount of stress she was enduring.

They were extremely hard on her and the work she was doing considering the hours that she worked and the fact that their afore mentioned inept managing skills often placed us in difficult positions from an operational standpoint. This worked effectively on her, as she was intimidated and understandably hesitant to speak out. It did not work on another woman we had from Africa who successfully lobbied to be moved to another office after only three weeks of being at our location.

Overall her experience in Philadelphia was a miserable one. It often weighed on my how an organization whose goal was “Solidary Humanism” could allow someone to be treated so poorly. Already wavering due to the cultish rumors and the nefarious network of companies, my faith was completely lost in the organization after her repeated attempts to be transferred to another office were ignored by the upper management (she emailed Ester Nelrup and Fred Olsen directly multiple times). Finally she was moved to another office and her spirits have changed, as evident in the nature of recent communications, however the damage has been done.

Of course the argument can be made that this was an isolated case in a single location, however I do think that it is deeper than that. I have also seen the same attitudes of superiority and practices reflected at the schools in Michigan and Massachusetts, both of which I visited numerous times. This was also troublesome, considering they were exploiting the well intentioned, however undereducated youth (I myself have a Masters from a top-tier university) who were quite impressionable and were not being effectively educated on the processes of development.

Personally, I now value the experience I had. But this is not due to some altruistic feeling or sense of accomplishment in the field of international development. But rather by gaining the knowledge to examine organizations for the truth in fulfilling their goals and the personal aspects of how to behave in the workplace as well as the managerial skills that I was forced to develop which are helping me in my new career.

Thanks again for your great work,

Michael Lehr

My background is in tropical agricuture / land use.   Started farming aged five, got my BSc, MSc, etc… straight through into development agricuture.   I actually landed up as a ‘farm systems analyst’.   Since then I’ve gone more and more in the direction of land tenure, land rights, access to law, policy and governance.

I’ve been working in Zimbabwean communal lands on and off since 1984  –   the days of Comrade Mugabe mixing with fresh echoes of the Matabeleland massacres.    It was almost hopeful then.   Last year I had a good long look at the Humana website and in particular at the new headquarters on a ranch outside Harare.

My take on that setup was that they had very cleverly played into the political aspirations of ZANU-PF.    What ADPP had done was buy (I think) a ranch suitably close to Harare, and remove the old colonial homestead and build themselves a new corporate headquarters (blue paint!) which looks like quite interesting and innovative architecture.

The road in / out of the site is flanked by open pasture with some expensive fencing which is a game reserve.    I recall this little piece of theme park Africa was touted as ‘integrated wildlife ranching’.    Not. The rest of the farm was broken up into 10 hectare plots onto which were ‘resettled’ Zimbabwean farmers.   Ten hectares is about five to ten times the average plot size for a subsistence farm in the communal lands. The plots were described as sustainable small-scale commercial farming.

The size of the land holdings told me all I need to know:    Ten hectares cannot be weeded or tended by hand by one family unit (one family = seven people including child labour), thus some access to mechanisation is required. The surplus that ten hectares can produce is marginal to process by hand – and marginal to take into market. You need access to relatively cheap transport.

As described in many authoritative academic papers, these critical resources are two areas where the various post-independence resettlement schemes fell down. I called a friend in Harare who works for Agritex – the government agricultural extension service.   He knew the farm.  Of course ADPP provided both tractor ploughing services at cost on a communal basis and a light truck to take produce to Harare. Tractors, trucks, water supply, seed supply, fertiliser, fertiliser storage, school and clinic are all effectively controlled by European staff.

Now look at the farm this way (and this is pure hypothesis): suppose a ZANU-PF acolyte wants to impress a visiting Minister of the potential of simple land-restribution, he can drive the man out to the farm, and see the animals, see the farms and see it all working… No big farmhouse, a handful of foreigners / Europeans working alongside local Zimbabweans. It could look pretty convincing. How convenient for Mugabe’s men to have access to a scene like that…….

by Hellen Adler <hellenadler@web.de>

Tvindskolen have been founded in 68 as a left-wing orientated alternative to the achievement-orientted society and they are not conventional boarding-schools but a united system that based on maoist lines with exclusively tvindspecific education, Efterskole, Highschool and seminar for tvindteacher with development aid service. Becouse Tvindskolen do not have
a biussness permission from danmark and do not get any state subsidy, so as a private school they are dependent to get solvent pupils from other countrys.

Tvindschools recommend and seek per internet, at other schools and german youth departments, to attract and entice with a great progressive programm of learning to advertise scecially Kids with ADS problems and pupils that have failed in their schools before. The friendly and tolerant behaviour of
the dansk advertising teacher combined with very cleverly rhetorik is able to interest and raise hope and expectaitions of something that do not at all correspond with the reality. Additional the opportunity of trips in far countrys gives impressions of this “great and extraordinarily methodology
of education, witch is very dubious in the reality, some teachers not even have a teacher education. The “extraordinarily methodology” let pupils independent work exclusive with his PC,
and in every scecially school subject he gets his own items in his owm tempo to work on. Every pupil get the suggestion that it is only on him self if he will reach a qualification and to the selfdetermination how long it will take, the teachers suggest him that he will be able to end with abitur in two or tree years tvindstaying. So the reality is that over the year school is interupted many times becouse of other activetys, and the
pupils are not able to manage more than one or two sobjekts with mostly bad results. Becouse many of this kids that start in tvind have even lost their motivation of learning and so they feel released at all in this way without any preasure and simultaneous a pseudo self-confidenz. But it needs for
abitur certificate 13 marks resp. 13 subjects, but the pupils do not manage more than one or two over the year, a very adroit tactic to declare the long stay necessity. Apart from the fact of this slowly dragging schoolwork with often bad results, the living rooms of the kids are poor and dirthy in wodden huts without safty roles, and the sanitary facilitys are in a state of alert, medical treatment does not exsist at all, the funiture like bulky
refuse, old soaked mattresses, windows stick and not able to get open, small heating radiators that are hanging direktly at the pore wodden walls become much to heat if they work at all, (contact with a peace of paper direlktly – it burns, a boys room did burn out of that reason) the washing rooms are cold and dirthy, the food poor. Becouse of the not lacking incrapable permission it does not exist a invigilation/ proctoring from
danemark and the german authorities seems not to be intreeted, but they pay between 5000 and  10.000 DM (in the meen time beetwenn 3000 and 5000 Euros) in a month for
one kids stay.

The reimbursement of costs for all the propagated special support to ADS and legasthenie nore single lessons in dansk when they start their tvindkarriere reaches one of the kids, but instead of that the older pupils “teach” the younger kids, for that the older ones get a good position to the teachers witch do more watching-work in the background. Every journey to an other country needs a long preaparing time, instead of schoolwork the kids have to do hard work all day (like picking moss) to earn money, becouse they have to pay the fligth ticket by themselves.

Humanitarian projects belong to the Tvind conzern, (also hotels and cloth companys) Tvind does a lot of good work with his development aids, specially fighting against AIDS. Some times in the year the tvindpupils are sended in different towns of danmark where they have to collect money for AIDS Help instead of school time.

If it would be a volunteer spare time projekt, that migth be okay, but as a forced alternative to schooleducation that get lost, that is misuse and a crime. Who ever wants to support voluntary or with allowance this great work in the poor countrys should go ahead, but like it gets handled in Tvind, to decive resp. abuses pupils expectaion of a good schooltraining and development of education with is very expensive for parents or youth departments – pupils that are forced to live and work in really bad conditions and situations,- in favour of other support and other projekts- That is a wrong and false interpritation of humanity.

About ways after school like studing or practical work their is no help at all, just exclusive new Tvindrecruits are cultivated, “eather you become completely conform and obsequiously or you be chucked out” – (formulation of a tvindpupil). Peculiary – the very lonly places in the nature of tvind schools, it befoced a very tigth comradeship. The young adults after years in tvind often without graduation at all – migth get the offer to work as a
teacher at tvindschool by “aptitude”.

If worried parents ask in the beginning, they get the answer . “First the dansk laguage must be perfektly lerned”, still woorried after the second year without results they get the standard answer: “Oh, the boy/girl is doing perfekt, he/she has made big steps in the personanlity devolopment, the other things will come!” And if not? Well than the teachers recommend
the next higher school with more disziplin (allegredly), and after the change: “well, it needs two or tree years and he/she will be able to habe abitur!” So here we have five years allready! Hold out tactics?! In favour of a long and longer stay in Tvind! As long enougth until the pupil does not want anything else as tvind, tvind, tvind.

The tvind movement began in the wild 1968, and in the meantime a big empire arised with hotels and schools all over the continent. The founder of tvind, Amdi Petersen, went in the underground 22 years ago, becouse he was suspected of deceive and misappropriation, the dansk goverment thinks that
he was/is using development aid as a cover. In the end of 2001 reporter did find him on fisher island florida, (island for millionärs) where he lived alone, sealed his 15 Million appartment off completely. Since february 2002 he is
in prison in california.

The consequence for future must be not to send pupils to tvind schools, no permisions of youth departments at all, until there are real big changes in the buildings, the conzeption, pädagogik, way of life for the kids and very strong
inspections.

The matter of fakt is that there is more than enougth money in and available for tvind – Mr. Petersen has proved that, who is able to live in a 15 Million appartment and to pay the best loyer of whole amerika – an hour maybe 1000 Dollar? Probably more, we do not know, but what we know is that the big money of Tvind, the financial circumstances, the income of pupils
school fees is not used for what it should be used. Tvind does investigate profit in Hotels and other projekts! Why, we like to ask, does Tvind not invest in school buildings, in education, in good and more teachers? Why?

Also we must notice at this piont that german youth departments let themselve been used as a very lucrative income source to support in a credulous and careless way this criminal education work and leave parents alone with this flop and specially the kids in this hopelessness, – and even if they hear and know about false bills, they do not react, in germain schoolssystem it would be called fraud and by laws official be punished.

Hellen Adler <hellenadler@web.de>

When I left Slovenia in early September [2002] approximately 35 containers had been placed.  Most of these [were] within an hours drive from the capital, and nearly all on council (or ‘commune’ as they are called there) sites.  I know that Humana were unable to come to any agreement with the central Ljubljana council to place any in the centre of the capital – apparently one of their mayors had misgivings about Humana having worked in Holland for a long time when Humana ran into problems there.

The present collection manager is a Slovenian man who was offered the job immediately on his return from his Humana volunteering in Africa. …This collection manager’s role is a normal salaried position and is not attached to the TG.  Humana d.o.o. report to Humana in Vienna and the Area Manager is an Austrian woman called Katerina Feldman but I don’t believe she is part of the TG – however there are certainly 2 Danish directors who sign everything to do with Humana d.o.o.  One is a woman called Helle (sorry, don’t know her surname), the other is her partner/husband whose name I don’t know but has connections with Humana in the US.

Whilst I was in Slovenia there were no Net-Up people being used in this new business, however an Estonian girl was sent there by one of the schools in Denmark (Holsted) because she had already been in Denmark 3 months (without a visa) and had to leave the country before the school got into trouble – so they just packed the poor girl off to Slovenia.  They had telephoned…one day…and the next thing we knew she was staying at our apartment for six weeks – not her fault but she was in a terrible state – she barely had enough money for food, she hardly spoke English and therefore didn’t understand what was going on.

But this is typical of the TG school system in Denmark – they invite people to their schools, give them little or no information, then when things start going wrong they just foist the responsibility onto other people – I was appalled.

Anyway, back to Humana d.o.o., it became very clear, very early on in the proceedings that the senior managers/directors of Humana have little or no business acumen whatsoever – even as an observer.  They were trying to set up this new business in Slovenia without having even budgeted for basic setting-up costs – having said they had “researched” Slovenia as a good place to set up the business.  They couldn’t afford to pay the suppliers, eg. people fixing the containers, office landlord, car hire firm and [a friend] was often paying these people from his own pocket although he eventually got reimbursed, but the bills amounted to hundreds of Euro’s at a time.

The reason given was that the business in Austria was in financial straits and therefore there was a cash-flow crisis.  However in the middle of this fiasco all the Humana Clothes Collection Managers from across Europe…were invited to a week-long jamboree in Zimbabwe and Mozambique to take place in August, all paid for by Humana.  It appears that many people went…God only knows how much that cost Humana, but seemed to me quite bizarre in view of their present financial climate – we knew they also had problems with the German, Dutch and Belgian markets and that the new “business” in Hungary was not going well either.

My cynical head suspects that it was offered as a ”sweetener” to the European “management” while all this Amdi Peterson stuff was going on.  I know the trip definitely went ahead because I have read the resulting “newsletter” in Spanish.

I can tell you that the address of Humana d.o.o. is:  Spanova Pot 3, Llubljana 1000, Slovenia.  I no longer have the main telephone number – I appear to have deleted it off my mobile, however this is the mobile number of the collection manager:  00386 31 510 521.  I hope this is of some use to you.

January 2003

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“I would never ever recommend this school to anyone,
not even to my worst enemy….”

‘Kara’s story’ 2003-5, received March 2007:

It took me now two whole years to write this down,… Actually the reason why I m doing this in these days is, because I struggled towards your homepage, and saw I’m not the only one writing it down, what we experienced.

I’m going to start my story with my experiences in Tvind, Denmark. I enrolled for the program in the beginning of October 2003, where they invited me for an information weekend in Denmark in the end of the months. Since I didn’t have that amount of money, which they asked for enrolment fee for the school up in Norway I asked for a internship position to work for it.

So, I went for the information weekend and right afterwards to Tvind, Ulfborg in Denmark to work there for the following 3 months.

The information weekend was very exciting and promised a lot to all of these young people sitting next to me. I m sure that most of them enrolled to the program after that meeting.

When I arrived at the school area of Tvind I got welcomed by a lot of children in the ages between 14 and 18 years. These three months were kind of nightmare to me. Teachers there aren’t trained to do this kind of job. Tvind should be a school, which helps children with difficulties or with a bad background. And they really do have horrible backgrounds…

The point, which disappointed me most was, that those “teachers” didn’t even care about the stories of the children, or why they have got difficulties. The children told me a lot, and that makes me so sure to say, that they are on the worst place of earth to help them.

Further on it was horrifying me what they told me about the teachers as well as the situation there in Tvind itself. And of course you could tell me now, these are only kids and they are telling a lot. Well, I saw it with my eyes… and this isn’t the way of treating children. Still, I also think that people living in Denmark are behaving wrong towards the children. They really do hate Tvind, and whatever is situated or living there. I think that they never should forget about the fact, that those children didn’t decide it on their own to attend this school.

They also abuse this school kids, or at least you can call it “mistreat” them. For example, there was this one child, who protected his computer to be destroyed by a teacher (actually the headmaster), and because of that he got punished not to join the schools group to go on skiing-holidays. They sent the boy up to the school in Norway for whole 2 weeks, where he spent the time alone. I brought him up there, and while sitting in the car, driving in direction airport, he got really hysteric and angry. He really wanted to jump out the driving car. We stopped and I talked to him, because I really felt sorry for him and at least I wanted to give him good advices for these 14 days. These teachers told him, without kidding, that he is going to be brought to a mental hospital. (To explain, this child already spent time there, and it was the place he was most frightened of) The headmaster told me not to let him call his mother. I wonder why, guess because she did something she wasn’t allowed to. Anyway, of course I let him phone his mother.

Can you imagine what kind of stress these children are going through?

Well, after that weekend I left Tvind. That was enough. This kind of thing I didn’t want to support.

I spent the week back home and encouraged me for the school up in Norway , where I was going to spend the following 6 months.

About the school I only can say that it was an old building, which really left the impression on me to break down soon. We had to construct rooms for the following teams, so they didn’t even want to spend money on proper workers.

It’s a huge building so one part of it got used as a hotel. In general this school is only after money. They just try to get money out of just everything. Of course we were the best option for gaining money. They sent us out of school for a total amount of time of 3 months of the whole 6 months program duration. In 3 months we should have gotten trained in what we were going to do in Africa and the rest we were abused to raise money for them.

Fundraising was similar to begging there. Of course you couldn’t tell the truth to these people there on the street. No one would give money to you, if you would tell them that it is staying with the school and only helps you to go to Africa, since we weren’t allowed to leave for Africa before we didn’t raise a total amount of NOK 45.000,- each.

With that I really want to thank all the people, who helped and supported us.

We didn’t get money for our stay there in these cities whether for travelling there, so had we to hitchhike from Norway to Sweden, in every condition of weather.

We also had to search for free accommodation in those cities. In general we were worse than beggars. We slept in churches or in cellars or wherever, sometimes even on the train stations. We had to beg for free food and every support we could get.

Once again, I really want to thank all these wonderful people out there in world, who helped us and supported us.

The rest of the time up in Norway we tried to train ourselves for the time in Africa . Since we were meant to leave for Mozambique we had to learn Portuguese and all about the country itself. People, Illnesses as well as the work we should do there.

In general I do think that we got more than only abused. They didn’t abuse only us, but also our dream, which made our whole team similar to each other.

The dream of going to Africa and change some things there.

Also for me Africa was a good experience I do think that people down there are like the slaves for this organisation. It all depends on how you use the time there. Actually you can not do anything, except of you are really a very motivated person, also going against the rules and giving just everything what is left, after these 6 months up in Norway .

I managed my time there quite well, even if it was very exhausting. I had 6 times malaria, and no time for resting. They expect you to come to work even if you are sick. I had to show up at my project even being on quinine and not feeling well.

In the end I returned back to Europe sick. I needed to go to hospital for more than 1 ½ months. I suffered of Malaria as well as Dengue Fever and almost died of that.

My kidneys as well as my lungs failed and it took me quite a while to recover again.

They don’t care about people, because after 2 months after I arrived back home of hospital finally I still had to fight with the school in Norway, who s going to pay for the stay at the hospital up in Norway. Imagine, they didn’t even want to waste money on that. I wonder what they would have done if I really would have died, what the doctors actually expected.

I would never ever recommend this school to anyone, not even to my worst enemy.

No one deserves such a treatment neither such an abuse.

‘Kara’ is not the writer’s real name

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Hanna’s story

‘Hanna’ (former Teachers Group member) writes:   Anybody wishing to join TG must remember that it is most certainly a money making scheme and as a TG member you are a wheel in that machine.

Yes, development is there but this is simply through the hard work and love of those nice people who have decided to dedicate themselves to helping others.  Nothing to do with the bigger plan!

Remember that you are convinced that you are there to help, help, help those poor suffering people of the world but yet there is always a voice inside your head that raises the question over and over again.  Things like why are they taking so much of my monthly salary away from me and where is it going?  Why are our staff being sent to Denmark, England, Mexico, Zimbabwe or wherever for ‘training’. Yet they do not learn anything?  Is it just another way of sending money out of these countries?

Being in the TG is a life changing opportunity and yes you do get to do whatever you want more or less.  But please remember not to get too involved.  Your life will pass you by and you will only have yourself to blame.  After all you did sign all those documents, contracts, and so on.

Believe me when it comes down to it they will turn their back on you and you are left with nothing.  I left with a small suitcase all those years ago and my life is just becoming normal now!!

Expect to work long hours and remember not to complain – you are seen as a trouble maker and lazy.  Keep your opinions to yourself as nobody is interested.  Sometimes you get to join in the decision making but this is a smokescreen – the decisions are already made and you are there just to be informed.  Later if you complain you are told that you were a part of the deciding.  They involve you so that you are a part of the whole smelling thing.  Soon enough there is no way out.

The clever part is that all this money movement is perfectly legal.  Development is there but I am certain that more could be there if they were true to their words.  I am waiting to see what the final plan is with the headquarters in Zimbabwe!  Is it really a home for all TG members, or a nice tourist attraction in the process of being developed – More money to be earned!  Let us wait and see!!

‘Hanna’ is a pseudonym.    Hanna writes:   I would like to let you know that the reason for my request to remain anonymous is because I have left behind very good friends in TG and as we all know, once one of us leaves the circle and becomes a threat, the remaining members are blamed for not noticing it life becomes not very nice.  I do not want this to happen to my good friends.

November 2003

IICD Michigan 2002

Hello, my name is Sara and I was a student who left IICD-MI when I was planning to go to Zambia in July [2002].

It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make and I can’t honestly tell you right now that I am fully happy to be back home away from IICD-MI.    I have always been aware of TG and A-S Properties and where exactly our fundraising money went too, but I was also having the mind set that I would be going to Africa to do good work.

Every NGO/NPO will be taking the short cuts to save money, when you aren’t making any, the amount you have you must try to make the BEST possible use of it, without money you can’t DO anything especially in a 3rd world country which wouldn’t have the money to support the organization. Now the question would be: If I knew it was corrupt in money scandals then why did I stay all this time especially when half of your team mates had left earlier on?

Because I believed in HPP [Humana People-to-People].     I thought — Yes, they are corrupt but I believed in the incredible potential this organization had to do good in this world.   The volunteers who join–each individual is amazing and has soo many strengths and skills to offer this organization, the belief that you don’t need a degree or personal money in order to help out those in need was a fantastic idea.    HPP believes that PEOPLE can help PEOPLE. What a concept!

But when I came back from Denmark after seeing the EXPENSIVE property out there that had in one of the schools absolutely no Teachers or DI’s (Bustrup) I was beginning to wonder what the true purpose of this organization was?

Was it a real estate company or was it an organization that was looking to train volunteers and watch out for its volunteers to do good in this world??

Well the training factor was out of the question.   In my school we had nobody who had experience to teach Tonga and we were being taught by our own fellow volunteer who was learning straight out of the FEW books about Tonga in the school, and the DmM which is bragged about being a HUGE database of information which we can learn from, was a HUGE waste of time, EVERYBODY (including the overly enthusiastic members of my team–who are still there) had stopped doing the DmM system after the second week of training.

I had spent my whole time in the past 3 months preparing for fundraising, going fundraising, going to Denmark and Norway (which I had done without knowing that our school was having HUGE FINANCIAL problems to the point many of the staff weren’t getting paid and phone lines were going to be cut).

Before I start with what happened at IICD-MI when I arrived back from Denmark, I would like to point out that my Zambia team had already lost 3 people (including my roommate) because they had read the Tvind Alert site and they couldn’t ignore their morals and ethics to stay in this program. It was one of the hardest weeks for me to go through because then I had to question my own morals and ethics… why am I here?? Does this make me a bad person for staying and ignoring all the facts??? Is the fact that I will be going to ZAMBIA to do GOOD–is that enough to right over all the corruption of this organization???

Well I had decided that it was. And to be completely honest I had decided that this organization was NOT for everyone.. and the only reason these girls had left was because this organization was NOT for them, and perhaps volunteering wasn’t for them at all. I had rationalized it to the point that these girls were weak volunteers and that they weren’t here to volunteer at all or that they didn’t want it enough. As it turns out I was wrong and that they were just more intelligent and had stronger morals and ethics then I did.

So now I have come back from Denmark and what do I find out???   That my fellow volunteers on the Guatemala team found out that they didn’t have a project to go to the DAY they came back from their FINAL fundraising trip. To be honest– I wanted to avoid the school, I didn’t want to deal with this again, but my teammates made me come back to the school and I ended up talking with the Guatemala team members. I think to be honest they should come onto this website and tell their story. I won’t tell it for them. I am here just to share what I personally went through.

So I listened to their story and I was shocked and appalled.   First to the fact that Line–the director of the school (whom we had been in contact with the whole time in Denmark) didn’t tell us what was going on.. so we had NO clue until Elton picked us up from Chicago airport on Sunday and told us what had been happening since last Wednesday.

From the moment I came back there were meetings after meetings. The meetings had two purposes in my opinion: 1) to deal with the Guatemala team 2) Damage control for the Zambia team that still has to fundraise 7-8 more weeks for the school.

As the week progressed my feelings and confidence in this organization diminished. I couldn’t see how this organization wanted to help others when it has been proven time after time (either speculation or hearsay) that this organization exploited the 3rd world people and even its own volunteers. But NOW it wasn’t hearsay or speculation.. it was ACTUALLY happening before my very eyes… my friends and fellow volunteers had been hurt.

Eva (the VP of the board of Directors) and Uoli (I may have spelled the name wrong–I apologize–the Director of the IICD-MA school) even admitted that they had made a mistake in the dealings with the Guatemala team, that how they found out and how they were initially dealt was wrong and a mistake and that the communication between projects and training schools needed to be fixed, they also admitted that the training need some changes.

But what I didn’t understand was that this organization has been sending DI’s to projects for 22 years and NOW they are making changes to the lack of proper training and lack of communication (so when a project completely crashes and burns that the training schools would at least have some idea that the project was in trouble BEFORE it COMPLETELY collapses to only 3 lines of child aid out of the 9 lines they were running). I began to again question.. how important is it to the organization to want to help people in need.. to want to train its volunteers so that they are capable in doing that or supporting it’s volunteers???

Even through out the week I truly wanted to believe that this organization wanted to do good, but I couldn’t see that when their own volunteers were devastated from the way the organization was handling them. It was then I made the decision to quit the organization. My train of thought was: If I and HPP can’t possibly stand up and want to help my fellow volunteers in a first world country where we have all the resources and support in the world, where there are laws to protect these peoples rights then HOW can I POSSIBLY think that I and HPP would want too or could help people in third world countries where there aren’t the numerous resources, where there aren’t laws to protect these people’s basic human rights etc??? How can I possibly believe that this organization wants to do right in the world when I couldn’t even see them wanting to do right to the girls on the Guatemala team.

Eventually after many parents involved later, the Board of Directors decided to do right and give back these girls their full tuition back (minus the registration fee) and they got to keep their plane tickets (which had been already booked before when they thought they were going to running projects). So then after that decision was made I came running back to the organization. I wanted to stay. To me that decision was a domino’s affect.. if the first one got knocked down (the Guatemala team was finally dealt the hand they deserved) then other possible changes could be made in this organization.

I believed that I could be a positive part to make this organization or at least my school (IICD-MI) to be more of what it was suppose to be–a volunteer organization willing to train and support its DI’s and send them to good working projects. Unfortunately my parents and sister came up to visit me. While I had been in Denmark my sister had been doing her own research of HPP and IICD-MI and TG and she did NOT LIKE what she found out and she wanted me out of there. But I ignored that and kept staying. But now my parents became involved extremely worried about my safety and sanity that I eventually became convinced that if I were to stay it would be for ABSOLUTE selfish reasons.. that I would be going to Chipata and working on the Hope project… regardless of the constant corruption that surrounds this organization.

Coincidently the day I came back home and left IICD-MI I received an email from one of the girls of the Guatemala team who was in contact with one of the girls who was on the Zambia team before me. Anyways she had sent me an email written by the girl in Chipata explaining why she had left Chipata. I don’t want this to be hearsay or speculation at ALL so I am now going to request that that girl go and post her own comments about the Hope project in Chipata (which Line and Uoli had last week said were VERY WELL ESTABLISHED and would never break down like the Guatemala projects), all I am going to say is that during this whole ordeal they knew why I wanted to stay, I wanted to go to Chipata and work on the Hope project and NOBODY there told me or even indicated that the girl that was working there had already left and NOT stayed out her 6 months there.

They (Line and my teacher Prabha) had been willing so much to show us letters from the same girl near the beginning of her stay about how happy she was but did not want to bother sharing any other facts like the fact that she had left the project. Again I really hope she will come and post her opinion about what she saw with her own eyes because I think this is really important for people to see that the school you’re training at does not give you all of the facts. They pretty much love the “ignorance is bliss” theory.. and I was living in bliss.

I am no longer living in bliss. I can not say right now that I am fully convinced I made the right decision, because in some way I still feel like I am failure as a volunteer that I obviously didn’t want to go work on those projects and help people because I couldn’t overcome the boundaries… but how high do those walls have to be before I realize I shouldn’t even WANT to climb over???

Why do I write this?? Because I wanted to share my experience… I would love it if this organization would change and reach the full potential I think this organization has to do good in this world. I want potential volunteers to understand that you must be CRITICAL of everything that goes on, and realize even though YOU may think you’re doing good.. that YOUR actions may be part of and helping something that is NOT!!!!!

If you have any questions please address them to Sara and post it up and I will try respond. I think I will post up my new email address in a couple of days. I apologize for the lengthiness of this email and to be honest I had to leave a LOT out because I didn’t want it to drag and drag.

Thank you for reading my opinion.

Sara

WITNESS

IICD Michigan and Planet Aid, USA

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Statement by Professor Alan Somerset

University of Western Ontario, Canada

I am writing about an organization with many faces, many identities; the most familiar ones are: IICD (“International Institute for Co-operation and Development”), HPP (“Humana People-to-People”), and Planet Aid. If any of these organizations is recruiting, advertising or engaging in other activities on your university campus, I urge that you read on, investigate the organization carefully, and get your university authorities to do the same. I am confident that once you have done this, you and your university will wish to see their activities stopped!

These organizations are all part of the same Denmark-based international operation named “Tvind”, the activities of which have been documented in scores of countries. Members of Tvind are known as the “Teachers Group,” and they are the directors of the various schools or other component organizations in the field. The leader of Tvind, Mogens Amdi Petersen, has been living a life of luxury in a condo on Fishers Island, Miami; however he was arrested recently and is presently in jail in Los Angeles awaiting extradition to Denmark to face multiple charges including fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement. Briefly, this organization (under its many names) masquerades as a third-world development aid and charitable organization, while in reality it enriches itself by appropriating much of the money donated for its own uses.

Why have I written this letter? A daughter, aged 22, was recruited as a volunteer overseas development worker by IICD, because she saw this as a way to go to Zambia and work, as she aspires to do, in overseas aid. She went to the IICD Development Training School in Dowagiac, Michigan, beginning in mid-December. The “story” she was told is that she and her team would be given development-aid training, language instruction and other training to enable them to operate effectively in Zambia. For this training, they were required to pay $3300 each. In addition, they would fund-raise in the US to support the work overseas, and after six months they would be sent to Zambia. The reality was far different! Most important, there was no training or instruction offered. Language training was self-instruction; one member of the team learned words from a book and taught them to the others on the team. Just before they began to fund-raise (by canvassing, or begging on the streets, in cities in the US) they were told that the money raised would go towards the IICD school’s expenses, the largest component of which was “rent” – paid, of course, to Tvind! This meant that the Dowagiac school was chronically short of funds – food was at times inadequate or unavailable, phones were cut off, the electricity supply was threatened with disconnection, vehicles were inoperable, small animals (pets) did not receive proper food or needed veterinary attention, and break-ins and thefts revealed serious problems with security. I saw all this when we visited, so I know what I am talking about.

Each team member was required to bring in an additional $5600 by fund-raising, which would require that at least half or more of the “training” time be spent on the streets in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, etc (where they were allowed only $3 per day each for food and expenses, and were billeted in sometimes-dubious locations). But the volunteers kept at it, because they wanted to live their dreams of aiding in the third world. When I was in Dowagiac recently a team destined for Guatemala, having completed their fundraising and having made final plans for departure, were told that their project in Guatemala had collapsed and that they could not go! After much struggle they received cheques for their $3300 “tuition” and the school kept all the money they had fund-raised. Since their departure they have experienced difficulties with clearing these cheques through their banks.

My daughter continued to be assured that the projects in Zambia were assured, that they were assisted by the Zambian government, and that the team members currently in the field were operating successfully. Because of a lot of research that our family had carried out (and the horrible conditions that we saw in Dowagiac!) we discussed the issue with our daughter and she made the, for her, difficult decision to leave IICD Michigan with us. When we arrived home, after a day-long drive, our daughter had received that day an e-mail from a member of the team who was supposed to be in Zambia, but who had returned home. She wrote that the real reason that she came home was because the HOPE projects in Zambia were quickly turning into disasters. The projects weren’t being funded; the volunteers weren’t receiving their subsistence allowances on time (or were only receiving part of what they needed to live). One week the volunteers had nothing to eat but plain slices of white bread. The organization was also taking unfair advantage of the African workers, who were the backbone of the work on the project.

As I said above, IICD/Tvind masquerades as an overseas development organization, but it is, really, nothing but a racket that exploits dedicated volunteers and the people they are trying to help. And as my daughter put it, very succinctly: “first of all the organization lies all the time…”

You might be thinking, “but this is an isolated case, an isolated story…” This could be a fair reaction to a personal experience, but I assure you that my daughter’s experience is not unique! There is abundant evidence of Tvind’s corruption, which extends through all of its component organizations. This can be found on a web site, at: http://www.tvindalert.org.uk I urge you to investigate this site carefully, read the many newspaper articles, first-hand accounts, police charges and other materials on this site, and follow the links to other sites that investigate Tvind, IICD, and other of its components. I am sure that, when you have done so, you will conclude, as we did, that Tvind and its creature-organizations must be excluded from university campuses everywhere. Thank you for your attention and concern.

Drafted for wide circulation within the academic community in Canada, the USA and Britain and also sent to the Canadian Association of University Teachers

Professor Alan Somerset
Department of English U. of Western Ontario
London Canada N6A 3K7
Reply email to: somerset@uwo.ca
or alan.somerset@utoronto.ca
WWW Site: http://publish.uwo.ca/~somerset/
Patrons project site: http://www.utoronto.ca/patrons

China, 2002

Friday, June 14, 2002

I joined Humana on march 7th 2002, Within a week I was sent to do the net-up program. Originally they told me I was going to Denmark so that’s where I bought the plane ticket for, only to be told the day after that I was going to Austria.

I spent two months in Austria living in what could only be described as a shit hole. It was a three room flat with as many as seven people living in at times, they provided us with 50 Euros a week for food but a lot of the time this money did not materialise so I had to go more or less to beg for it.

At the info weekend there is a story that Jorn Balsen tells to nearly all-new Humana sign ups. He tells how he came to join Humana that he was working in a clothes shop bored out of his mind always messing up the clothes so he could fold them again for something to do, and how Humana rescued him from this life of boredom.

Well I found myself in Vienna doing exactly as Jorn had described so bored that I was knocking clothes off hangers just to hang them again. All the shops I worked in made a healthy profit, how could you not selling second hand clothes you pay nothing for them and then sell for more. Yet two of these shops had not had their rent paid for three months. This work in Vienna was to finance my school fee,

I was heading for the school in China.

I arrived here on the 15th may and was greeted by my team four Chinese girls. Now its ok for us Europeans we have the access to information about Humana and to people who will tell us about all the
shit aspects. Here though Humana is totally new people aren’t really aware of the work NGOs in general do so when Humana come telling people that they want to help the poor, its a revelation for many Chinese.

At the moment their school is being heavily promoted around the Yunnan province of China with Chinese students being asked to pay a whopping 12,000 rmb, a lot of money for them. With no option of doing something like net-up or getting a scholarship it all comes from their own pocket. Then you have to ask what does it pay for because as with all DRH schools the education is non-existent. The school has still managed to create a huge hole in its budget with savings having to be made on things like the buying of milk.

I was left with no option but to quit after the letter below which I had written to some friends got into the hands of the chief here. Then I was brought in front of the whole school in a kind of a mock trial were they went through the letter point by point asking me to substantiate what id written all the information is second
hand though got from other people so I couldn’t defend what I’d written with out dragging others into this circus trial.

Lotte Lunsgard is head of operations of Humana china here in Yuxi. She first came to China 7 years ago. The 7 years she has spent here have all been on the expense account of Humana in that time she has learnt Chinese and also she has been carrying out “research”, what that research involved or what she discovered are not public knowledge nor will they ever be. If you ask Lotte about this you’ll get a vague look and an evading answer. This is a character trait of hers it is in fact very difficult to get a straight answer about anything from her. But then anyone with any experience of Humana will tell you that this is quite common among those who are members of the Teachers Goup (TG).

The TG is the hardcore of Humana these are the people who are at the operational hub, it is made up of around 500 people mainly African who have little or no say in it, the rest European and the majority of these are Danish women who are the real driving force behind all Humana policy.

So after 5 years of this “research” Lotte started her first Humana project in 2000 here in china, a child aid project situated in Wuding county about 5 hours from yuxi.

The project budget for the first year was 20,000 US dollars this works out at around 200,000 Chinese Yuan. The general aim of a child aid project is to bring education to the children and adults of poor isolated villages as are found in Wuding county. Most of these villages are without schools, to build a school there in a village would cost about 3000 Yuan, so well within Lotte’s budget for the first year you would think but no school was built in fact nothing visible ever materialized with this money.

For the second year of her project she was again allotted 20,000 dollars, did she do any better?  Well a school was built but not with Humana money with private money of course.  That does not stop Lotte claiming credit for building this school. What, if anything has she done, she has taken clothes, books and pencils to the villages and distributed them.

In 2001 she also employed local people to help set up these schools in existing buildings and get them running which by June of last year they had done.    But as with everything done by Humana the schools where opened without any thought into the consequences of this. So within 4 months all the schools had been closed by the local party committees, this being a dictatorship you cannot just go around setting up schools without first consulting the party.

So this still leaves a massive gap in her budget where was the rest of the money going?   Well we know that Lotte was renting a flat in Kunming, the capital of this province, all through 2001 a flat with four bedrooms that was going completely unused this explains a large chunk of the budget for her Child Aid project.

Also we know that Lotte likes to travel.  In March of this year she disappeared – no  one knew where she was,  even Humana people from Denmark where phoning to  find out her location. When she returned she said she had been promoting the school in Singapore,   but did anyone from Singapore join the school here in Yuxi?  No.

This is the only trip of hers we know about because from October last year there has been a team of development instructors her with Lotte in Yuxi training to go to India. So before October 2001 we don’t know how many trips she has taken on Humana money.

So what happened after these schools were closed?  Well nothing until February of this year when James Feeney was sent out here to work on the project and two weeks after him a team of Humana inspectors came from Shanghai to look at what Lotte had been doing. Of course they found the answer to this to be nothing. So if Humana know all about Lotte’s Chinese adventures as we know they do because James has told them everything why don’t they do something about it?  Well, this is where it gets very strange and you start to  realize that maybe all those rumours about Humana being a cult to be true. Criticism is not allowed within the Teachers Group, because a permanent facade of sweetness and light must always be kept up and there is no knowledge of anyone being thrown out of the teachers group. The worst
consequence for gross misconduct seems to be a transfer out of harms way.

So now, May 2002, James is now in charge of the Child Aid project but before he  does anything he has to receive permission from central government in Kunming and the application for this permission is being handled by Lotte. She’s still here and still in general charge of all things Humana in China what she actually does from day to day is a mystery though because she has nothing to do with the school for development instructors and she no longer runs the Child Aid project.

At the moment there is NO Humana project in China even though I’m being trained to work on it and James’s budget to start a project has been cut in quarter so he’s scrimping for every penny.  But if you attend a Humana info weekend in Europe you will be told that you can go to China and work on Child aid project.  This is what I was told, at a time when there was no project.

If this is how Humana money is spent in China how is it spent elsewhere and by whom?   It makes you understand why they are so secretive and that they obviously have much more to hide.

There are certain things Humana have which explain where some of there money goes, for instance their headquarters in Zimbabwe which includes a safari park. Now I don’t know how much it costs to start a safari park but I bet you could buy a few schools in China for the price.

Lawyers don’t come cheap either, especially if you’re hiring Robert Shapiro (defended OJ Simpson) to defend one of the members of the teachers group Amdi Peterson who is wanted in Denmark for tax evasion and other financial crimes.

But from what I know of Humana’s sources of income which briefly includes second hand clothes shops all over Europe, fruit plantations in South America (believed to be on the large size), furniture factories in china, computer company in Shanghai, fundraising carried out by every Humana volunteer and private donors, you can see that they have a very large income.    So where is it spent?    Well not in China and, from what I’ve heard, not in Africa.  Most Humana projects in Africa are funded by other NGOs but still operate under the Humana banner. How much money do they make, who spends it, where do they spend it and on what these are some of the questions I’d like to know the answers to but probably never will
know.

UPDATED JULY 7, 2002

I can also tell that at the school in China now there are four students, all Chinese girls.

There were four other students – that’s me, an Austrian guy and two Polish people  who started at the school in Oct. 2001.

They were meant to be going to India for the  project there.   During the eight months they were at the school they had a teacher for the first month, then the rest of their team left quickly, followed by the
teacher.

So the school at that time consisted of Lotte, Lily (Chinese woman doing promotion) and the two Poles. So they spent about five months sitting round watching movies and surfing the net. They were supposed to leave for India on the 30th March. It never happened. In typical Humana style they never took into account how difficult it is to get a visa for India when applying in China. So they left at the same time as I did along with the guy from Austria.

So right now at the school there is Zhang Ho (headmaster, non-TG,  Lotte Lunsgard (general manager), Thomas (TG member kind of on holiday I think),  Magiec (promotions, TG), Lily (promotions non-TG), Jimmy (DNS student and teacher for the students at YID).

Regards,  Noel