I’m 24 years old and from Germany I was participating in the development-instructor program of Humana from March 2001 until April 2002. I made it through everything and my experience was basically a positive one throughout the whole program. Sure, some things often seemed to be a little bit shady but no organisation is perfect.
As a part of raising the money for the program fee I was working at the sorting centre of “UFF Butikkene” in Klofta/Norway from January until February 2001. At that point of my engagement with Humana I was really dedicated, that was probably the reason why I could endure horrible working conditions and an insane manager for 2 months. I don’t want to go into details now, otherwise it might end up being one of those crazy stories you get to read in your guestbook.
I don’t know if you know anything about the organisation NetUp which I think poses one of the main problems in this matter. Shortly described, NetUp offers work to people who don’t have the money to pay the program fee. It works together with all the DRH-schools and places the volunteers as workers in sorting centres, second-hand shops, etc. in Europe and the US. NetUp also organizes places to stay for the workers and is actually responsible for the administration of everything. The basic deal is that you, as a volunteer, raise money for yourself to be able to pay the program fee. The only catch is that you never get to see the money you earn since it gets directly wired to the school you want to start your program in. You should even pay for all the living expenses yourself while working at the specific place. In my case I received some pocket money from the manager of the sorting centre. It wasn’t much but covered my expenses for food. The pocket money was later deducted from my salary. I chose this way of raising the money because I didn’t want to pay anything out of my own pocket and I thought by doing NetUp I could actually do something good at the same time.
Basically the problem started whilst I was at the school doing the 1st period. After one month being into the program NetUp wired the money I had earned in Norway to the school. But it was far not enough money and didn’t comply with the actual amount of money I thought I had earned (I had been given a written information concerning the official amount I had raised from Klofta at the end of my working period. This amount was also stated in the tax form I had received later form the tax authorities in Norway) I was mentioning this to the Co-Headmaster and she promised to contact NetUp to sort it out. But then this issue was put on hold, I went to Africa with having only paid about one third of the actual program fee. After my return the school gave me a scholarship for the rest of the program fee. Case closed I thought.
But after having come back to Germany I started to receive strange letters from the tax authorities in Norway. It seemed that they wanted me to pay an amount of approx 625 EUR for some reason. I couldn’t figure out why since all the letters were in Norwegian. After the sixth letter I decided to write back to them asking a letter in English to be able to understand what was going on. I promptly received an answer. Those 625 EUR are tax-arrears of the salary I was supposed to earn in Norway. I haven’t found out why there are actually some tax-arrears I have to pay. But the outline is that if I won’t pay this money Norway will report this to the authorities in Germany and I might face a court trial or something. They also forwarded that letter I had written to UFF Norway to get a statement from them. This week I got an e-mail from the tax officer in Norway who told me that UFF would refuse to pay this money. Now it’s up to me to either pay it or face persecution from authorities in Germany. I tried to contact NetUp and UFF but I haven’t got a reply so far.
My opinion is that since I didn’t receive a single dime out of those two months of really hard work, I don’t have to pay this amount at all. Why pay tax arrears if I haven’t received anything?? The only problem is that I threw away that contract I made with UFF. That’s why I placed that message in your guestbook. Maybe someone who worked there too might read this message and might still be in the possession of the contract. I believe that NetUp is illegal anyways, because many of the volunteers working on behalf of NetUp are non EU-citizens and therefore would need a working permit to work in Sweden, Germany or Norway. I heard from a friend which is from Poland and worked in Sweden at a shop of UFF that none of the people working there had had any working permits. All of them had been from countries in Eastern Europe. After Amdi Pedersen got arrested they were thinking of closing down the whole organization but apparently it is still up and running.
This will be all for now. BUT!!! – In case you’ll consider quoting this on any of your pages at Tvindalert I want you to ask me first for permission. I wrote this all to you because I really believe in serious journalism. Most of the people I had met whilst being at the school and in Africa were great people and capable of doing development work. There are many black sheep though. I think if you would take a closer insight view on NetUp you might find out that many things are not according to the law. Maybe there lies the secret of all the dirty money which goes through Humana and the TG.
C
