The Institute for International Co-operation at Williamstown, Massachusetts - Humana Alert

  Who runs IICD Massachusetts?  

Jytte Martinussen (headmistress)

Jytte Martinussen is an honest, principled and well-meaning person. But she is a Tvind person through and through, having been a project leader in Africa, Tvind headmistress, treasurer of the Tvind enterprise Planet Aid Inc and on the staff of Fonden E-advice in Denmark before coming to Massachusetts. She is undoubtedly a member of the Teachers Group, indoctrinated into Tvind's command structure and unique financial code, and having worked virtually nowhere else.

Who else is connected to IICD-MASS?

Co-founders: Mikael Norling and Ester Neltrup
Former vice president: Eva Nielsen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IICD, Massachusetts

  The IICD at Williamstown, MA  

IICD Massachusetts is a Tvind school.

This means that while its stated role is to train young people to work as volunteers abroad - which it does, up to a point - it is also a part of the Tvind organisation, and should be considered a part of a large multinational business, tainted by allegations of financial misconduct and cultism.

IICD Massachusetts is one of about 17 DRH colleges around the world today owned and run by the $860 million Tvind empire.

The school is operated by the Tvind Teachers Group. It was founded in around 1986 by Mikael Norling, one of the original members of the Tvind Teachers Group. Norling is notorious in Europe for his praise of the Cambodian communist dictator, Pol Pot.

Locator map

  Links  

ICD Watch. Critical website for those thinking about joining a program at a Teachers Group school in the USA. It was created by an academic at a US university in around 2002 and provides a detailed analysis of the teaching, philosophy, financial structure and on the ground development work then offered, partly based on comments in the Tvind Alert guestbook. Includes useful alternatives to IICD programmes.

  Press reports  

Mission Control, by Jay Cheshes (Boston Magazine, October 2000)

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.

  A complaint to the Attorney General  

In 1991, three IICD students made a formal complaint to the Massachusetts Attorney General about the teaching and standards of the college. The complaint covered five areas: Inadequate preparation for work abroad; false advertising; health and safety; questionable ethics, and fundraising.

The students wrote: "As a group, we are bright, creative and well educated people who feel we have been betrayed, misled and manipulated by a group of rigid ideologues......"

The complaint was ignored by the Attorney General's office.

Read the full complaint here

  How to Live Your Dream of  Volunteering Overseas ...       don't volunteer with IICD!    

by Zahara Heckshcher

IICD-MA student, 1987-88

After volunteering with IICD in Williamstown and travelling to Zambia, Zahara Heckscher became a graduate student in international development in Washington DC, and is now a writer and lecturer on international development.... Her best selling book, How to Live Your Dream of volunteering Overseas, includes a section advising students not to volunteer with IICD. Contact:  peacepeace@compuserve.com. Read Zahara's story in full

How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas, by Joseph Collins, Stefano DeZerega and Zahara Heckscher (Penguin, 2002) ISBN 0 14 20.0071 X

  The Teachers Group member's story  

'Lars', TG member and IICD-MA student, 1994-8

This ex-TG member now lives in Chicago. He wrote: "It took me two years to be able to write this. I haven't been able to deal with all the emotions since I drove off the hill at IICD, Williamstown in the summer of 1998. I just did not want to talk about it or think about it..... It is kind of embarrassing to admit I spent 5 years in a cult...." 'Lars' is a pseudonym.   Read the story

  Matt's story  

IICD-MA student 1989-90

  Jane's story  

IICD-MA student 1992

I joined IICD between my sophomore and junior years at college and 1992.  I was on the "Angola 5" team but as things got increasingly unstable after the elections there, I pushed for us to go to a different DAPP project. IICD gave the impression that switching projects as a group was a possibility, though it never happened.     We all banded together in response to the mistreatment, fund-raising nightmares, rumors and newspaper articles getting passed around.    Read the story

  Chris's story  

IICD-MA student, 1991

I joined IICD in Massachusetts in January 1991, and left two weeks later and without my money - about $3,000.....We were to go to Mozambique to plant eucalyptus trees...later, I learned that eucalyptus trees grow fast, but they deplete the soil, and would probably cause more problems than they solved...and I wonder now who got the money from the short-term investment. I left not out of frustration with the program or suspicion, but rather for personal reasons - I learned that I was going to be a father. I took a couple of days to decide what to do, and when I decided to leave the program and stay in the US, I asked for my money back. They refused. I never regretted my decision, but now I am all the more grateful I left when I did.

  How does IICD fit in to the Tvind financial empire?  

IICD Massachusetts is an integral part of the Tvind financial network of offshore companies:

  AS Properties Ltd  

The school is owned by AS Properties Ltd. This Delaware-registered company is controlled by Tvind, and is a subisdiary of an offshore company registered in the British tax haven of Jersey, Argyll Smith and Company.

Argyll Smith is itself controlled by the Teachers Group and 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 Tvind colleges.

  Planet Aid Inc  

The school has a close relationship with Planet Aid Inc. Planet Aid is a US not-for-profit controlled by Tvind, ultimately connected to Teachers Group offshore companies selling old clothes to eastern Europe.

IICD students often pay for their places at IICD by giving free labour to Planet Aid, helping collect and sort old clothes.

But how much of Planet Aid's income goes to the Third World? Planet Aid is part of a large family of Teachers Group old-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)

Reports on Planet Aid in Canada and the US suggest that a similar financial scam may be operating there today.

  Johnson & Johnson  

Stories from inside IICD MA......

26/01/2008: A Brazilian volunteer's complaint

I am not a young student like the most that are here and that is more easy to be deceived by the staff here in IICD MA. I am older than Jytte. I am 57 years old and I am here to go to Africa as a life project.

I am standing many disagreeable things since I arrived here in April 29th when nobody knew that I was arriving, and Else Marie the responsible for the new volunteers was not here too. And after she came she didn't recognize her mistake and began to intimidate me with her power, as I was here by myself and just arrived and could not go back to my country, Brazil, anymore in that time.

Even because also I wanted to do the process to go to Africa as a life project from many years before. And was an oportunity to go to Africa being in a process that could be interesting and to enrich my life in a certain way.

Well, I asked for scholarship because in my conception volunteers must be supported instead of pay for being a volunteer. So I had to work for 3 months for promotion (that means Else Marie the woman most rude and unfair I ever meet in my life). But as I had to travel postering for them I could have good times out of IICD-MA while working for them. And I did a very good job for them despite they never say a good word about my job. They have the policy to put the person down and never up.

And as I had to face another people also rude and aggressives I was put aside by the staff that incentivated the youngs against me like going out the dining room table when I sat to have a meal, leaving me by myself as I was a leper person.

I stood, stood and stood. Finally began the 6 months training and the team leader of my team, the August team 2007, was Chris, the most rude and ill mannered man I ever seen in my life. Stupid and agressive too. Terrible. But after a while he went out because the staff (Jytte) asked him to go to other TG's section. You know that nobody that belongs to TG is never sent away, they just switch places. TG is like a secret society with weird rules and processes.

Well, I would like to know if you are interested in my long history because I want to tell all over the world the truth about them. They now want to invest totally in South America special in my country Brazil where they had already a huge farm where thet explore wood and sell to Europe and make millions of dollars. You can imagine how will be easy and extremely cheap for them cheat the young people that want to be a volunteer, fighting poverty (like they say) and use them to cut trees and work in a very hard work like cut wood and explore the mineral resources of that farm for free!.. Our budget to eat everyday is only 3 dollars. Can you imagine that??

Well I am waiting here to sign my contract with Humana People to People to go to Namibia and they left me to last because I am not being a good girl. So they put me in a kind of 2 weeks probation until sign the contract (and my trip do Namibia supposed to be in 2 weeks). Jytte said to me that I will sign the contract when they come from Michigan where they are now in a big TG meeting until next Monday, January 28th when they will be back here. Let's see.

You can have a great true story to tell about them now. And this time you can have many evidences that they are not really non profit organization. I have many others things to tell you, many many.

I was just looking for a help in a really stressed and desperate emotional moment after many months standing the worst possible things here from these people that only thinks in MONEY and that have a stone instead of a heart and treat everybody like shit and just smile if you make a lot of money for them.

And after I stand so many things to go to AFRICA I cannot give up now. I just want to go to Africa, I worked very hard fundraising until today with all this fever and flu to make much more money than I had to for them to now cannot sign that miserable contract with Humana to get my flight ticket to go to Africa. You know that each of us DIs has to make 6000 dollars for them. I had already done more than 7000 and they still want more fundraising.

When I'll be there in Africa so I wil be free to do the contacts I have. But I need they do their part (as I did mine) giving me the contract to sign and giving me my flight ticket to go to Africa, and stop intimidate me with menaces to not sign the contract. That's it and after that I will do whatever I could to not allow them to go to my country to "fighting poverty" and make a lot of money with the poverty of my country. Poverty give a lot of money to these kind of organizations.