HAVE YOU SIGNED UP AS A VOLUNTEER WITH
HUMANA, PLANET AID, DAPP OR GAIA?
Or have you enrolled as a ‘Development Instructor’ at any of the colleges listed below?
Over nine years we have been contacted by scores of students and volunteers with powerful complaints about these volunteering programmes and the colleges that run them.
The most frequent complaint is about very low standards of ‘training’. There are also allegations of dire living conditions, having to work unreasonable hours, bullying, money-making, and sometimes a ‘cult-like’ atmosphere.
At the end of it, foreign aid projects in Africa, Asia or Central America are frequently described as poorly organised and of limited value.
There is a reason for all this. We believe these volunteering programmes are not primarily about foreign aid – they are about money. We can show how, over many years, students have been exploited and very large sums have been skimmed off.
The real beneficiaries of these training programmes are a small group of white, European, middle class ‘financial brains’, some on the run from police and living in exile, who, we believe, have cleverly diverted cash away from charity into their own ‘money pot’.
CCTG California (USA)
IICD Massachusetts (USA)
IICD Michigan (USA)
CICD (UK)
DRH Norway or One World Institute (Norway)
Richmond Vale Academy (St Vincent, Caribbean)
Yunnan Institute for Development (Republic of China)
Kwa-Zulu Natal Experimental College (South Africa)
DRH Sikkim (India)
The Tvind School Centre (Denmark)
Any other ‘DRH’ College (for example in Berlin, Moscow, Italy, Brazil)
The volunteering schemes
OUR DOSSIER ON THE TEACHERS GROUP
Last revised: 19th March 2010
