Richmond Vale Academy. Commercial banana plantation. Tvind was expelled from St Vincent in 1985, but has since returned.
St Vincent and the Grenadines is an independent island nation in the Caribbean
Links have been restored
The college
A Tvind ‘DRH’ college or ‘Travelling Folk High School’. Originally opened in 2001, and reopened on 3rd March 2007 on land owned by the Teachers Group since the early 1980s. (Formerly called CID Caribbean).
Like every other DRH college, Richmond Vale is the subject of many complaints by students about teaching, facilities, staff competence and attitudes, and about fundraising. See Witness. For example:
- Inadequate and incompetent teaching
- Misuse of money raised through ‘fundraising’
- Misleading promotion
- Contempt for local people
- Exploitation of volunteers
According to one correspondent the school is ‘like a mansion’, yet only feet away local people are forced to live in tin shacks without running water or latrines. This is the nearest neighbour, 20 feet away.
Daniel wrote: “These people who say that they are there to help, are truly just enclosed in their offices, doing promotion, bringing more people to this project, making them work mainly in cleaning and keeping the building beautiful with the excuse of training them as volunteers, when the truth is that 20 feet away from the complex (a mansion that really is) are iliterate people living in galvanized shanties, without even beds, safe drinking water, latrines, and no basic things. And what is being done for those people? NOTHING! “
The students
Disillusion is rife:
- March team 2009 – of the 19 people who started on March Team 2009 in RVA, only 7 went to Africa.
- September team 2008 – reports that all participants left the projects after arriving in Africa
- March team 2007 – seven people left the program because ‘there is so much corruption and negative feeling with Humana and associated schools’.
Graffito by disenchanted student
Who runs Richmond Vale?
The principal is Stina Herberg (left). Herberg is a Teachers Group member, who was active in Denmark and the UK before being sent to St Vincent.
See witness statements for comments about Ms Herberg.
When asked about www.tvindalert.com, according to one student, Herberg asserted that the author was ‘in the TG for 20 years and that you weren’t happy with the common fund and that’s why you left.’ This is false – a complete lie.
Who owns Richmond Vale Academy?
Richmond Vale Academy is owned by a Teachers Group property company, which makes significant profit from the (almost certainly overvalued) rent the school pays. For more information on this please see our page Hot money: the offshore rent racket (still under construction)
Daniel Breton’s story (Richmond Vale 2009): ‘Stina Herberg, the person at front of the project, shows no scruples and publishes untrue information of what the program is, bringing people to the program with lies. Here they are.’
R writes (Richmond Vale, March 2009): ‘I’m still stuck here on St Vincent … Im planning to leave this place and go to Africa by my self … I finish my Action Team period last week (4 months working to get the “scholarship”) and we started on Monday the famous training … today they are going to talk about TG … I dont want to miss that … so many shit they speak!’
M writes (Richmond Vale, Feb 2008): ‘Me and 3 other former development instructors who started their training in the Richmond-Vale Academy … with the international organisation Humana, left this school after 4 months there, because the circumstances and the school’s headmaster as well as the teachers were just crazy!! Now we all lost a lot of money since the contract thet we signed with humana says that there is a extremly high cancelation fee…’
J’s story (Richmond Vale 2007): ‘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 to associate 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.”
LINKS
Richmond Vale Academy Alert
(Facebook Group)
“This group its to inform all those people interested in applying (to) the volunteers program about the true things going (on) inside this school. We as creators of this group think the people running this school is (are) not being ethic nor transparent with the info showed on RVA’s webpage.”
TVIND EXPELLED FROM ST VINCENT, 1985
We understand that until 1985, the Teachers Group operated a ‘small school’ on St Vincent as part of their supposed social programme for ‘problem teenagers’ – on the site now occupied by RVA.
In 1985, the Teachers Group came into conflict with the St Vincent government over the (possibly illegal) purchase of the Orange Hill Estate, a large banana farm. The sale was blocked, Tvind was ‘expelled’ and the school closed in 1985.
Tvind has since been allowed back. If you can provide clarification of these events, please tell us.
The Orange Hill Estate story
Commercial banana plantation, one of many TG landholdings in the caribbean
This estate (variously reported as 3,300 and 8,500 acres) was bought by the Teachers Group in March 1985. The TG entered into an agreement with a local lawyer, Othniel Sylvester, Q.C and used a loophole in St Vincent company law to acquire the land in the teeth of strong opposition by islanders and the St Vincent government. The purchase price was a reported $2.1 million.
A bitter dispute ensued between the Teachers Group and the government of prime minister John Mitchell. Orange Hill estate is about ten per cent of St Vincent’s cultivated land, and under St Vincent law, foreign ownership of land was forbidden.
Two months later, in June 1985, the government compulsorily re-purchased the land. The Teachers Group was expelled from the island.
To make the purchase, the Teachers Group used an administrative ruse: it created four locally-registered front companies (Rose Cottage Limited, Denver Portland Limited, Blue Ridge Limited and ZBF Limited) with St Vincent citizens as signatories. A fifth company, Windward Properties, actually bought the estate on behalf of Tvind’s funds Faelleseje and Estate.
Subsequently Faelleseje and Estate sued the St Vincent government for a reported $14m compensation (1). A settlement was made in 1991. In 2004, Faelleseje sued Sylvester for money it alleged had fraudulently failed to pass on to them.
(1) Windward Properties Ltd v Williams [1988] LRC (Const) 406 (St Vincent and the Grenadines HC)
The Vincentian (29th March 1985): Orange Hill Sale, How it was Negotiated
Jamaica Gleaner (18th April 2005): Man on CCJ selection body faces fraud rap.
The St Vincent ‘small school‘
closed 1985
Until 1985, the Teachers Group operated a school for ‘problem teenagers’ (above) on the site now occupied by the Richmond Vale Academy. This ‘school’ was occupied by pupils from Europe sent to board with Tvind as part of its supposed social programme.
This school, like Orange Hill Estate, was a matter of concern for the St Vincent government – because of Tvind’s reputation as a cult. Calling for its closure, Prime Minister John Mitchell spoke of fears of ‘another Jonestown’ (referring to the massacre of hundreds of people by cult leader Jim Jones in neighbouring Guyana in 1978).
When Tvind was expelled from St Vincent in 1985, this school was closed.
Do you have information about a Teachers Group college or enterprise? Please tell us
Last revised 1st March 2010
