📚 Historical Archive Notice
This content is from the original TvindAlert.com (2001-2022), preserved for historical and research purposes. Some images or documents may be unavailable.
CICD and the Tvind financial empire
CICD is not just any college. It part of the Teachers Group financial network of offshore companies:
Argyll Smith & Co
The school is owned by an offshore company, Argyll Smith and Company, a property company also controlled by the Teachers Group. This is a key TG company that owns many of the Tvind colleges round the world.
The Jersey-registered parent company Argyll Smith & Co is well known to Danish police and British charity officials. According to the 2001 Danish police report, Argyll Smith is one of several key Tvind holding companies. It was also the offshore company implicated in alleged corruption discovered by the UK Charity Commission.
The Argyll Smith and Company website describes the company but does not mention that all its properties are occupied by the Teachers Group's own colleges.
Used clothes enterprises
The school is part of the same worldwide organisation that controls several British used clothes enterprises, and one newly-created charity. The current British commercial clothes enterprises are Planet Aid UK and Green World Recycling.
Humana UK was placed in receivership by the Charity Commission in 1997-8 after an investigation found evidence of financial fraud. The Teachers Group recently registered a new clothes charity for the first time since then, DAPP UK, in March 2007.
CICD also collects clothes under its own name, or using the name 'College Aid'. Planet Aid bins have been banned by Asda and other stores from their car parks.
CICD students have been known to pay for their places by giving free labour to the clothing companies to help collect, sort and pack used clothes.
How much of these companies income goes to the Third World? They are part of a large family of Teachers Group used-clothes companies worldwide. In Europe, journalists have discovered that the Teachers Group has been operating a financial scam for years, sending only a small proportion of the profits from donated clothes to Africa.
The majority of the profits from inter-company trading have been creamed off to Teachers Group offshore companies. For a clear explanation, read Michael Bjerre's article on Humana Holland in the Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende (24th Aug 2002).
The Teachers Group fraud trial
CICD, Planet Aid, Green World and the rest all belong to the network of offshore companies at the heart of the current European fraud trial against Amdi Petersen (left) and five other leaders of the Teachers Group cult. Petersen is currently on the run from Danish police.
The CICD at Winestead Hall
The CICD college at Winestead Hall is a Tvind Teachers Group school.
Its apparent purpose is to train young volunteers to become 'Development Instructors' in Africa and elsewhere - but it is also a part of an $860 million worldwide commercial empire. It is a money-making element in a large multinational business, controlled by the Teachers Group, tainted by allegations of criminal financial misconduct.
It is the only British 'Travelling Folk High School' of at least 17 such colleges round the world run by the Teachers Group. The Teachers Group is an organisation based in Zimbabwe, whose leaders are currently facing prosecution in Europe and are in hiding from the police.
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CICD College
How CICD operates
CICD is a Tvind 'DRH college'. It is modelled on the Tvind educational system first devised by Amdi Petersen in the 1970s. Young people follow a 'learn by doing' teaching programme with travel to the Third World.
A large part of students' time is spent fundraising - begging on the streets - and looking after and maintaining the school. Teaching is based on the unique Tvind ideology. This system has led to many complaints.
Student rebellions
The rebellion of 2000
In January 2000, seven students left the college complaining that they had been misled and were being exploited for financial reasons. The exodus was reported in the Times newspaper and local media.
School of thought. Cruel Mind Games - Inside the Secret World of a Cult (The Times, 2nd May 2000). By Michael Durham
BBC Look North TV, 7th January 2000 (transcript)
BBC Look North & Tyne Tees TV, unbroadcast interviews, 6th Jan 2000 (transcript)
A rebellion in 2001
October 2001, Tony wrote: "Just thought you might like to know that 12 people have left the school in Hull. There were three from the May team, eight from September and myself who started with the September team, but I was put on November team. The Sept team came very enthusiastic but it did not last long, the mood changed to the running of the place and the treatment of the people......So my first few days I worked fixing up the place while watching what the Sept team, I was just merely sat on the fence. What we saw was something out of the dark slave trade." Tony.
Some CICD students stories
Who runs CICD?
Three current directors (2007):
Karen Barsoe - head teacher, director and company secretary. Danish. A well liked and committed Tvind Teacher who graduated with the first group of Teachers in Denmark in 1971 - nevertheless a solidly dedicated member of the Teachers group.
Birgit Soe - director. Soe also manages Planet Aid UK, the Teachers Group clothes collection enterprise. Part of Planet Aid UK's commercial operation is 'College Aid', which collects clothes to fund CICD.
Birgitte Erichsen - director. Address given as the Teachers group head office in Grindsted, Denmark, so presumably a member of the TG. Otherwise we have no information.
Previous directors 1998-9
When CICD began, among founding directors was Mikala Gottlob. another early Tvind graduate who became a key member of the 'Tvind Economy' in the 1970s, was 'school, advisor' at Winestead Hall school, and was a director and company secretary of the disgraced Humana UK until 1998. She is now a non-executive director of the Tvind-related Trayton Group of companies in China.
Another founding director was Helle Lund, also a former director and company secretary of Humana UK, and a board member of the now-closed Tvind schools. She is now a manager of the Teachers Group Gaia clothes enterprise in Chicago, USA.
Press and broadcasting
CICD in The Times
School of thought. Cruel Mind Games - Inside the Secret World of a Cult
(The Times, 2nd May 2000). By Michael Durham
Other press:
BBC Crossing Continents - Denmark's Tvind
The Guardian: Enigma of the Leader
Other press
Crossing continents
Archive Info
Recovered from:
Wayback snapshot 2008-06-23
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