IICD College, Michigan, 2009
In August 2009 Chelsea wrote to Tvind Alert: My name is Chelsea and I am currently a volunteer at IICD Michigan. I’m leaving tomorrow though for many reasons. There are many things wrong here. I was wondering if any volunteer actually sued humana or the IICD. I spent $1,000 and was not told of anything. We asked for more information.
This is her story:
The organization
There is absolutely no organization at IICD and that’s what they use against you. You never know what’s going on so you have to be prepared for everything and if your not its all your fault. We are told we have a task to do that day like “go to the homeless shelter” we are not told what time we’re going, what car we are taking, who has the keys, or what we’re supposed to bring. There is a weekly schedule with the times and names of classes were supposed to go to. But usually these classes never take place, you are lucky if they tell you they are cancelled.
A typical day would go like this:
8:00am Breakfast
8:30am Morning Course
9:30am Morning Chores
10:00am Team Class
1:00pm Lunch
2:00pm Team Class again
6:00pm “Sport”
7:00pm Dinner
8:00pm Some kind of activity
I was scheduled to teach an English class every day at 11:30-1. I would prepare a grammar lesson then 2-3 activities to go along with it. A couple people came the first and second day and it went well and everyone said they loved it and they used the new vocabulary I taught them. Then they just stopped showing up. The room I held my class is was now used by another team. So I switched my class to another room. I had a lesson prepared everyday but no one showed up.
We were expected to make a cooking list and a cleaning list to assign the volunteers. But we were never told who was going to be gone so if we put someone’s name down and they didn’t do their job, it was our fault. Or if we were assigned to a job and were going to be gone all the week we had to find a replacement. There was absolutely no organization in anything.
The management/teachers at IICD
M is in charge of promotions. She sits in the promotions room from eight in the morning till eight or nine at night. She is in charge of the “DA’s” working in promotions and doesn’t do much else. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how the place is run and has to ask T questions.
T is in charge of the accounting at IICD. She teaches most of the morning courses and IICD and is the person you need to ask for any question. Her real name wasn’t T though, her mail came addressed to [another name]
G is from South Africa and was a “teacher” for my team. I say “teacher” because she never actually taught us anything, she never helped us if we had questions, and most days class was cancelled so she could go skype with her African friends. One day she hit her head on the desk and class was cancelled for the next few days as she sat in her room and ate ice cream. She spit her gum out onto a desk and left it there, she would say we volunteered to do things when we didn’t, she assigned presentations for every week on things we already learned then we would never give them because class would be cancelled.
C is from Brazil and was a past volunteer to Africa. She has a boyfriend that lives in Africa and she teaches a team going to Africa.
O is a teacher from Brazil. He wasn’t there the entire time I was there so I don’t really know anything about him.
K is a teacher from Brazil she was a former volunteer in Africa and taught a team going to Brazil.
Our “jobs” at IICD
The very first day of “training” we are forced to pick two jobs. One is for our team and one is for the school. The job descriptions are very long and not detailed. My job was Building Maintenance/Cleaning and Hygiene for the school and our team. So according to the list I was in charge of making sure everyone got to wash their clothes and shower, making sure all the rooms were clean, making the chores list, planning “Building Friday” and “Building Weekends”, shoveling the snow and salting every morning when it snows, making sure all the rooms are at a good temperature, buying all the cleaning and building supplies, fixing anything in the building or around the building that broken and many other things. I was completely overwhelmed by these jobs till I realized that you aren’t actually expected to do these things, they just want someone there to blame when things go bad.
I walked into the kitchen one day about three weeks into the training and was harassed because we didn’t have toilet paper or dish soap. I asked her who was supposed to buy them and she said another volunteer that was out of town was supposed to buy them but because it’s my job I was just supposed to magically know that he was out of town. My teacher actually told me that she had told me last night to go get some. She swore to me that she had for about five minutes until she realized that she meant to, but she didn’t.
I was in charge of one “Building Weekend” M (the person in charge of promotions) gave me a big list of things that needed to be done in all the rooms. She told me just to go buy all the things off the list that we needed then organize all the people. The problem was that after she gave me the list she went to Denmark and didn’t come back till the second day of Building Weekend. So I was left to interpret her papers which was no easy task. Her list consisted of things like “sparkle and paint the brown cuppord, get the tings to fix the lamp, get knots for under the sink and get nuts for under the sink. She said that she would take apart the showers and sinks to see how they worked and get the things to fix them.
I tried to organize the best I could and even asked the other Danish teacher for help, but it was not enough. When M came back nothing was good enough for her, she told me to drill a lock into the wall and clean the bathroom. So while I was doing that she shut off the water to the building because she was working on one of the showers, then told me I had to drop everything and go to the store to get the things to fix the shower because I hadn’t prepared for Building Weekend enough. (Even though the showers were her job!)
After I had finished all of my tasks and discovered mouse poop by my bed (which consisted of two mattresses on the floor) I found a bed in a room that no one was using and switched my mattresses for something that would keep me off the floor and away from mice. Mette came in and yelled at me for doing that then told me that I stole someone’s bed and they wouldn’t have a bed anymore. I tried to explain to her that I just switched out my bed for another one. She informed me that two mattresses on the floor do not make a bed and if I wanted to switch my bed for a real bed I should have taken one from downstairs from one of the rooms that was locked and drug it up the stairs all by myself.
The courses at IICD
All of the morning courses that were taught by T had a slight undertone of pro-communism (Cuba and North Korea) and anti-capitalism (America & Western Europe). We would have classes called “Garden Farming” where we would learn how when Cuba was cut off from the rest of the world they turned to garden farming to survive and their country survived and thrived because they helped each other. Some of the morning courses included propaganda videos like a man in India who helps slaves escape and gets all the little children into schools, and videos on the poverty in Africa. A couple morning courses were on They make you believe that what you’re doing in their school will actually change the world and help people, but in reality it doesn’t.
During one morning course, a volunteer that had just gotten back from Africa was telling about her experience and told us that the training provided at the school did not prepare her for Africa at all. Trine immediately replied that she didn’t prepare herself for Africa. But how are you supposed to train yourself to go to Africa? Isn’t that what the teachers are there for?
The first week in our team classes was called “About IICD” T taught us these lessons. We learned about the DRH movement and about the beginning of the Teacher’s Group and how good and wonderful the Teacher’s Group, Humana and IICD are. At one point she drew circles and connected TG, DAPP, IICD, Humana, Planet Aid, CCTG, CICD etc. So we all knew that they are connected.
The second week I was there was Africa week. We learned how terrible all the white people are and how we caused them all to go into poverty and that’s why we must volunteer and “fight poverty”. We watched many videos on the apartheid in South Africa and one news report on Rwanda where the main focus was how America and the UN knew exactly what was going to happen and they didn’t do anything. When the reality was if they did anything it could be considered an act of war.
The third and fourth week didn’t have a theme, it was just a time for us to prepare for the fundraising. We learned from some videos about how Corporations played a part in the Holocaust.
Another thing, the “language training” does not exist. You can train yourself in the language and they will take responsibility for it, but there is no way that by training at the IICD you will be prepared for anything except for how to fundraise.
Scholarships
If you do not have enough money for the program which is $3,900 tuition plus $300 non-refundable enrollment fee, they offer you a partial scholarship. This means that you come before your program starts for either two or four months depending on if you have a half scholarship or a 75% scholarship and work in “promotions”. Promotions means you are trying to enroll people into the program.
One girl came a couple months early to work in promotions after she had been there for about two weeks they informed her that they needed more people doing the clothes collection in Detroit, she had to leave the next day and wouldn’t be back for two months. She was horrified. Detroit is a very dangerous place, especially for girls.
Fundraising
“The students participate in fundraising for the expenses not covered by the fees. The fundraising quota is based on $ 6,000 average per person in the program. This money remains the property of the institute.”
The above quote is taken directly from the enrollment contract. I briefly read over this before I signed it. I took from this quote that on average people raise $6,000 not that they would have to or they couldn’t go to Africa and would have to stay at IICD longer and fundraise more or just go home. When I asked them what the money was for I was simply told it was so we could go to Africa.
The number one way they fundraise is by going “street fundraising” they go to a specific city or group of nearby cities for 1-3 weeks and find stores to set up boards in front of the store and ask for donations from customers.
Each team going to Africa is expected to go on four or five fundraising trips. I soon learned that the training is not what staying at IICD is about, its about the fundraising. They push fundraising on you so much it is all you do all day and sometimes most of the night. Designing boards, making t-shirts, making name tags, designing cans to hold money was the training.
While going to these cities we use a website called “couch surfing” to find places where we can stay. We do not know these people and they could be ex-murderers and we would have no idea.
While fundraising one volunteer is supposed to go to each location alone. Again, this is the US and the cities are not safe, especially for young girls who are fairly small and don’t speak English.
Strange things
Some strange things I observed during the month I spent there:
Many volunteers did not know exactly what they were getting into when they got there. Some people working in promotions made promises to them that they couldn’t keep. One man came under the impression that he was on full scholarship because that’s what the person working with him told him. M yelled at the man and was irate when she found this out.
I found a plane ticket home for Christmas break that was forty dollars cheaper than the rest so I asked M if it was ok if I left one day early and save $50 and she said no, that would make it so I was away from IICD for almost two weeks and that was not acceptable.
They allow anyone to drive the cars. I told them one day I didn’t feel comfortable driving and I had been in a few accidents and Trine gave me the keys to her car because I needed to go to the atm in town. One guy didn’t have a license and they let him drive and they people they let drive really shouldn’t have been able to drive. They drove on the wrong side of the road when they turned corners, they had no idea about traffic regulations or speed limits, and all of the cars had something wrong with them.
We were given many tasks that were unimportant and urged to stay up to work on them. My teacher told me everyday that because I sleep 7-8 hours a night that was way too much and I need to sleep 4-5 hours a night instead. I should be working on fundraising instead.
We were urged to be entirely emotionally dependent on our team. I was ostracized because I would call my family and not tell my team why I was sad.
I was the only American at IICD Michigan. No one I spoke to in Dowagiac or in Michigan had heard of IICD.
The people working in promotions would ask me how to get more Americans. I told them that they just have to go to schools and give presentations and put up flyers. They told me that the schools wanted too much information and asked me to recruit my friends to come.
No one could tell me exactly what the team going to Brazil was doing. I was told they were “fighting poverty” and “Child Aid” but when I asked for specifics they just handed me a brochure which just tole me the same thing.
A little more about my experience
There were posters in my school for IICD in 2007. i emailed them a little then but then decided that I would go to school. They emailed me July 2009 and immediatley offered me a scholarship so I went.
I was not told before I got there that the enrollment fee was not part of the tuition and that because I was on scholarship the reimbursement schedule did not apply to me.
“If a participant leaves the course before completion the reimbursement schedule for the fee is as follows:
Prior to: Amount reimbursed
14 days into the program $2,400
2 months into the program $1,500
2 weeks before departure $500”
They told me that because I was there a month they spent my $700 on my room and board and training. Yeah right!
The building the our rooms were in were infested with spiders and mice and smelled like urine. It was absolutely disgusting and they never did anything to correct it.
Each room had an air-conditioning system but we were forbidden to use them because they cost too much. In Michigan during the summer it gets over 100 degrees F and is always extremely humid so it was miserable and made the smell even worse.
A week before we went on our first fundraising we were supposed to go to the Homeless Shelter to help out. We went for two days and the rest of my team sat in the car while my teacher ad me were inside working. My team decided that week they didnt like me because I had found enough places for me to go fundraising but not enough for all of them. So they all spoke spanish to each other and refused to speak english to me. So I asked T if I could switch teams because I no longer felt welcome there. She waited two days then finally told me I could switch to the Fight Poverty Brazil team that started in September but I would have to pay $2500 because i would lose my scholarship. Which didnt make any sense because thats not even what the tuition cost is $2500 + $1000 is only $3500, the tuition cost is $3900.
I went to a family I had met from church and spent the weekend while there was a big TG meeting and most of the volunteers were being sent to detroit. They never told my old teacher that I was no longer on the africa team so she kept calling me Monday. While I was at the families house I started researching into IICD and the tg and i found all that information. I confronted T about it and she ignored all of my accusation she even denied Iicd’s connection to the TG! She kept asking me to come back so we could sit down and talk.
Chelsea left IICD in August 2009 after one month. She has filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s office in Michigan.
Chelsea, email: ilivetomakeadifference@gmail.com
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Posted: 8th September 2009
