Planet Aid Inc
Clothes collection boxes in the USA
Links have been restored
The Teacher’s Group’s leading used clothes and ‘volunteering’ enterprise in the USA, and a leading source of its global income. Planet Aid Inc is linked to the three US colleges, IICD Massachusetts, IICD Michigan, and CCTG and can also be linked to the other recycling enterprises in the group, Gaia, U’SAgain and Garson & Shaw.
We can also link Planet Aid inc directly to a number of US property companies, and large scale financial transactions regularly occur between it and the complex network of companies and shell companies in the Teachers Group financial network. Planet Aid is a registered 501(c)3 and is tax exempt.
DID YOU EVER WORK FOR PLANET AID IN THE USA?
WERE YOU EVER A PLANET AID VOLUNTEER?
DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO WAS – OR IS NOW?
PLEASE HELP US EXPOSE THEM
Planet Aid is is becoming larger and more influential as a used clothes and volunteering charity in the United States, despite its well-documented links with financial malpractice and shady business dealings. Planet Aid is affiliated with and controlled by an international body called The Teachers Group or ‘Tvind’. One of the leaders of this controlling body is in jail for financial crimes, several are in hiding from the police and others are firmly associated with property deals and offshore money movements.
We need your help. The reason is that Planet Aid is today very widely accepted by town halls, school boards, state legislatures and even the US government as a bona-fide aid organisation. It is receiving official support and large sums of public money. We are challenging this uncritical acceptance on the basis of Planet Aid’s explicit connection with Tvind Teachers Group (which it publicly denies), police documentation, statements already sent to us over several years, and other evidence in the public domain.
We know what we are looking for and how easy it is to prove our case. But despite media exposure, nobody is listening. Now we need testimonials from anyone with recent (say within the last three or four years) experience of Planet Aid or its directly associated organisations (Garson & Shaw, DAPP, ADPP, etc), either in the USA or abroad, who can help put together our dossier on the Planet Aid ‘money-go-round’. This could refer to anything relevant to Planet Aid’s finances, its conduct as a charity, its management in the US, its use of foreign labor, its linked colleges, or to activities in the field in developing countries.
If you have any information to pass on, please write us a brief 1-2 page testimonial and mail it to feedback@tvindalert.com. We will add it to our growing private dossier and pass it on to organisations that need to be properly informed. We will also soon put our dossier in the public domain. Generally, to be credible our dossier requires information to be accurately sourced. Please include your name and contact details (not for use or publication without express consent). Material will be treated as strictly confidential unless explicitly agreed otherwise. If you have any questions, write to us first.
THANK YOU
The Tvind Alert team of professional and ‘citizen’ journalists
Hot Money: Five ways Planet Aid moves money into offshore accounts
Some further information on Planet Aid
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
HOT MONEY
Five ways Planet Aid secretly moves money to the Teachers Group
Tvind Alert article
“Planet Aid is not recognized as a charitable organization by any of the most respected watchdog organizations in the United States or the world, and … just the thought of someone using the needs of poor children in Africa as a front to get rich is repulsive.” Green Cotton Blog
WHO RUNS PLANET AID?
Here are the names of the directors and officers listed in the Planet Aid 2003 Annual Report. Almost without exception, we know they are members of the Teachers Group. Several of them are also connected in one capacity or other with other Teachers Group enterpises in the US – colleges, clothes collections, property or other business.
Fred Olsson (general manager)
Olsen asserts that Planet Aid Inc is an independent charity and has nothing to do with the Teachers Group or Amdi Petersen. In fact, Olsson has worked within the Tvind Teachers Group for many years. In 1980 he helped set up UFF in Sweden.
Mikael Norling (chairman) – Planet Aid founder. A TG member and close associate of Amdi Petersen, notorious for his support of Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot in the 1970s. He now fundraises for Planet Aid on Wall Street.
Ester Neltrup (president) – co-founder, and a former principal of IICD Massachusetts.
Jytte Martinussen (treasurer) – also educational director of IICD Massachusetts
Eva Nielsen (director) – also runs Gaia
Bob Dzere (director) – also program director at IICD Michigan
Soren Hofdahl Teachers Group member in charge of the plantations on St. Lucia and a director of the UK registered company Mt Lezard Estate Ltd since around 1993.
NEWS
January 2008
Better Business Bureau issues damning report on Planet Aid
The BBB is a US advocacy group with branches in every state that promotes high standards among businesses and charities. To be accredited by BBB, a charity must meet 20 criteria. In 2007-8 Planet Aid applied for accreditation but failed 3 of the 20 requirements.
The BBB report from January 2008 went through each requirement and explained why Planet Aid didn’t meet the acceptable standards of a charity.
2006
American Institute of Philanthropy gives Planet Aid an F grade
TOP US MEDIA REPORTS
May 2009
Fox TV investigates Planet Aid in Washington (Fox TV)
4th April 2009
A Scam of Planetary Proportions? (The Bollard.com) Inside the Planet Aid scandal. By Craig Idlebrook. This excellent and comprehensive expose of Planet Aid appeared in a US online newspaper.
12th February 2004
The Green Bins of Gaia (Chicago Tribune special investigation)
By David Jackson and Monica Eng. While this very well informed two-part special focuses on Chigaco’s Gaia recycling bins, it also provides a detailed analysis of the whole Teachers Group and makes clear the links between Gaia and Planet Aid.
The Commons, Windham County, Connecticut (1st June 2006): Planet Raid? by Les Kozaczek. According to Planet Aid’s 2004 tax return, the corporation listed gross sales of $9,968,728 and expenses of $9,689,682, even though all of the merchandise Planet Aid sold was acquired for free.” The report also notes that “the hairsbreadth profit margin that Planet Aid recorded on this tax return, and the typically small margins it has filed over the years” have concerned local people. (No longer on line)
Lawrence Journal-World, Kansas (2nd April 2006): Investigation into Planet Aid. (No link available)
The Pitch, Kansas (12th May 2005): Boxed In? Used-clothing collectors Planet Aid say they’re not in a cult By Bryan Noonan.
Baltimore City Paper (20th October 2004): Adventures in the Rag Trade – Do Clothes Dropped Into Planet Aid Boxes Support International Aid or an International For-Profit Scheme? By Erin Sullivan.
Boston Globe (April 7th 2002): ‘Planet Aid’s Work Draws Worldwide Scrutiny’. By Farah Stockman.
Boston Magazine (Oct 2000): ‘Mission Control’ – in-depth feature on the Teachers group. “In the USA In 1970, a group of Danish hippies set out on a mission to save the world. Thirty years later, some of the young acolytes they recruited claim the group has become a cult, amassing riches in the hundreds of millions of dollars under the direction of an elusive and mysterious founder. Now, with recruiting efforts reaching into the United States, ex-members say the mission is no longer to save the world but to conquer it. North American headquarters? Massachusetts.” By Jay Cheshes
WITNESS
Michael Lehr’s story: Collections, manager, Planet AId, Philadelphia, 2006-7
LINKS
Better Business Bureau report (January 2008)
American Institute of Philanthropy (2006)
Green Cotton Blog
Last revised: 26th February 2010
Do you have information about Planet Aid? Please tell us.
