From the New Zealand Herald, 24th February 2000
By Theresa Garner
A controversial European charity dogged by allegations of corruption and cult-like practices is recruiting young New Zealanders.
The Tvind organisation, which has operated in Europe since the 1970s, is calling for volunteers to fundraise and train in Europe, then go to Africa to do social work.
A number of official reports have cast doubt on its activities over the past two decades, during which Tvind, which began as an alternative Danish school, has grown into a worldwide empire based around second-hand clothing sales and fundraising.
Critics claim that only a small percentage of the money ends up benefiting the Third World poor, and that the organisation is profit-driven and supports the millionaire lifestyles of a handful of Scandinavian businessmen.
The group has begun advertising for recruits here, and last week a representative held meetings with teenagers in Auckland and Wellington.
Also known as Humana, Tvind runs schools across Europe, where "volunteers" pay to be "trained" for six months before being sent to Africa for another six months.
An Auckland woman whose dream of helping in Africa came apart at the seams is warning prospective volunteers off joining.
Gita, aged 28, an office worker who does not want her full name used, was left disillusioned and out of pocket after signing up to attend the College for International Cooperation and Development in East Yorkshire.
She joined in a recruitment drive last March. "You don't think about who's running it. You're just excited, because no experience is required and no qualifications necessary."
She never got to Africa, but was part of an exodus from the school last month after discovering that money they were raising by selling promotional newspapers was not going to Africa, but was financing the school.
"It's a big scam."
When staff visited the school, "we realised they all had cellphones and Mercedes to drive around in."
"If they were a company who had no money to even run a school, then where did this money come from?"
Another school, the One World Volunteers Institute in Norway, has advertised in newspapers here, and last week a promotions officer, Iveta
Drymlovea, flew to Auckland and spoke to about 20 people, including teenagers, at the Glendowie Community Hall. Another meeting was held days later in Wellington.
Ms Drymlovea admitted that the bad publicity was following Humana around the world. "It looks really bad, but it's rubbish. They have taken things that are normal and twisted them."
A member of the Teachers Group, whose members pool their income, she laughed about it being called a cult.
"I don't think it's for everybody. It's for people who want to put a lot in, and the only thing you get in Africa is self-satisfaction."
She said that about four Kiwis had got involved, most recruited during their overseas travels.
Inside feature:
By Michael Durham
It all began in the heady days of the late 1960s.
Mogens Petersen, a popular, attractive and rebellious young schoolteacher, left a comfortable job at the Kroggaardsskolen state school near
Odense, in Denmark. According to legend, he was sacked for refusing to cut his long hair.
What followed was to affect the lives of thousands of idealistic young people - first in Denmark, then in the rest of Europe, Africa and America, and now in New Zealand, Fiji and the Pacific.
The movement Mr Petersen founded is usually known as Tvind - or by other names such as Humana (not to be confused with the leading United States hospital owner and healthcare provider Humana Inc in Louisville, Kentucky.)
Tvind is now a worldwide phenomenon, though little understood beyond Scandinavia. It is an empire, with schools, colleges, "charities," trading companies, volunteer networks and national organisations in many countries.
But it is an empire with a dark side.
According to the personal testimony of many early supporters, Mr Petersen's revolutionary baby has grown into a monster.
What began as a shining example of radical thought in action, they complain, has become
commercialised, money-grubbing and cynically exploitative. There are even those - and there are many - who speak of brainwashing, psychological manipulation and mind control.
Tvind, they say, has become a cult, and Mr Petersen is its guru.
He leads a charmed life, not least because nobody in the outside world knows where he is.
In 1979, he went underground, refusing to appear in public or give interviews, and he has not been seen by anyone outside the organisation for 20 years.
He is reportedly driven everywhere by his friend Kirsten Larsen. Fearing assassination, he has built a huge headquarters in the Zimbabwean bush, kilometres from the nearest town.
Today, young people in many countries are warned to steer clear of Tvind - by official bodies such as the French and Belgian Parliaments, by anti-cult groups and by former members who have set up an international "movement against Tvind."
Even so, Tvind continues to grow and attract devotees. Suppressed in one country, it springs up under another name or in another part of the world. Now it is recruiting in New Zealand universities, and in small ads in national newspapers such as the Herald.
Tvind began in a windswept field on a farm - from which it gets its name - outside the Danish village of
Ulfborg. Mr Petersen, Kirsten Larsen and a small band of enthusiasts laboured to build, with their own hands, two "alternative" boarding schools, the Necessary Teacher Training College and the Travelling Folk High School.
Next, Mr Petersen set about recruiting more like-minded young people to "train." Posters went up in universities and job
centres.
In the anti-authoritarian atmosphere of the early 1970s, young people flocked to join, attracted by an "experimental" course which included minibus expeditions to Third World countries and spells working in factories, where students supposedly experienced life in the raw.
Over the next few years, Tvind students in their battered buses became a familiar sight in western Denmark and in places as far afield as India, the Middle East and South America.
From this modest start, the Tvind empire grew. It now has a presence in more than 50 countries, where desperately loyal
"Tvindies" have been sent, like latter-day apostles, to open schools, buy property, start covert companies and commercial operations, run "Third World aid projects" and sign up more recruits.
Is any of this helping the poor? Only Mr Petersen knows.
Young people working abroad for Tvind have told of being forced to hitch-hike for kilometres in dangerous parts of Africa. Volunteers collecting donations are regularly expected to knock on strangers' doors in European capitals, asking for food and accommodation.
Yet loyal Tvindies expect to take such risks - sometimes at the cost of their lives.
In 1983, a boat carrying eight young Tvindies to a meeting with Mr Petersen in Denmark sank in a storm off Dover, drowning all of them. The boat was unseaworthy and none of the eight was an experienced sailor.
One of the dead was a young Norwegian woman, Kristin Skagemo. Tvind refused to pay to send her body back to Norway and presented her parents with the bill.
As Tvind became more authoritarian, paranoia grew.
Newspapers were banned, enabling Mr Petersen to keep a tight grip on information. Followers were told never to commit anything to paper, not to use public phones and to talk to one another by digital
cellphones. Today, communication is often by encrypted e-mail.
Blind loyalty aside, the secret of Tvind's success is money. For a supposedly philanthropic
organisation, Tvind has an acute nose for business. Its inner circle, known as the Teachers Group, pool their assets in a private "money tank,"
Faelleseje.
Over the years, Faelleseje has become enormously rich - as long ago as 1983 Danish journalists estimated its wealth at over $15 billion.
If it ever accounted for its riches - which it does not - Tvind would probably assert that the money has been used to build Tvind schools, staff training colleges and run "Third World aid projects" overseas.
In fact, there is evidence that it has secretly spent much of the money on commercial farms and plantations abroad, where Scandinavians run profitable businesses exporting fruit and vegetables to Europe and the United States.
Henning Bjornlund, the former financial director of Tvind - who himself defected in 1989 and now lives comfortably in Australia - recently confessed to an undercover reporter from a Danish newspaper that he had personally arranged many such purchases, none with any link to charity.
At one time, there were vast orange estates in Australia. In Fiji, Tvind has been connected with a company called Pacific Trading Ltd, and Tvind is reported to own plantations in Belize, Ecuador, Brazil, the Caribbean and Zimbabwe.
In recent years, Tvind has run a worldwide operation collecting castoff clothes for resale, making yet more millions, under the names Humana People-to-People, Development Aid from People-to-People and Planet Aid.
The clothes are not given away - they are sold in Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe. Tvind says it uses the money for charity projects, but there is no independent verification.
Even Tvind's international volunteer programme and Third World "development projects" come at a price - students hoping to volunteer for work abroad have to pay around $6500 in advance, and collect more money by selling postcards and newspapers on the streets, instead of attending college.