A statement by Professor Alan Somerset, University of
Western Ontario, drafted for wide circulation within the academic community in
Canada, the USA and Britain and also sent to the Canadian Association of
University Teachers
I am writing
about an organization with many faces, many identities; the most familiar ones
are: IICD (International
Institute for Co-operation and Development), HPP (Humana
People-to-People), and Planet Aid. If
any of these organizations is recruiting, advertising or engaging in other
activities on your university campus, I urge that you read on, investigate the
organization carefully, and get your university authorities to do the same. I am confident that once you have done this, you and your
university will wish to see their activities stopped!
These
organizations are all part of the same Denmark-based international operation
named Tvind, the activities of which have been documented in scores
of countries. Members of Tvind are
known as the Teachers Group, and they are the directors of the various
schools or other component organizations in the field.
The leader of Tvind, Mogens Amdi Petersen, has been living a life of
luxury in a condo on Fishers Island, Miami; however he was arrested recently and
is presently in jail in Los Angeles awaiting extradition to Denmark to face
multiple charges including fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement.
Briefly, this organization (under its many names) masquerades as a
third-world development aid and charitable organization, while in reality it
enriches itself by appropriating much of the money donated for its own uses.
Why have I written this letter? A
daughter, aged 22, was recruited as a volunteer overseas development worker by
IICD, because she saw this as a way to go to Zambia and work, as she aspires to
do, in overseas aid. She went to
the IICD Development Training School in Dowagiac, Michigan, beginning in
mid-December. The story she
was told is that she and her team would be given development-aid training,
language instruction and other training to enable them to operate effectively in
Zambia. For this training, they were required to pay $3300 each. In addition,
they would fund-raise in the US to support the work overseas, and after six
months they would be sent to Zambia. The
reality was far different! Most
important, there was no training or instruction offered.
Language training was self-instruction; one member of the team learned
words from a book and taught them to the others on the team.
Just before they began to fund-raise (by canvassing, or begging on the
streets, in cities in the US) they were told that the money raised would go
towards the IICD schools expenses, the largest component of which was
rent paid, of course, to Tvind! This
meant that the Dowagiac school was chronically short of funds food was at
times inadequate or unavailable, phones were cut off, the electricity supply was
threatened with disconnection, vehicles were inoperable, small animals (pets)
did not receive proper food or needed veterinary attention, and break-ins and
thefts revealed serious problems with security.
I saw all this when we visited, so I know what I am talking about.
Each team member was required
to bring in an additional $5600 by fund-raising, which would require that at
least half or more of the training time be spent on the streets in
Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, etc (where they were allowed only $3 per day each for
food and expenses, and were billeted in sometimes-dubious locations).
But the volunteers kept at it, because they wanted to live their dreams
of aiding in the third world. When
I was in Dowagiac recently a team destined for Guatemala, having completed their
fundraising and having made final plans for departure, were told that their
project in Guatemala had collapsed and that they could not go!
After much struggle they received cheques for their $3300 tuition
and the school kept all the money they had fund-raised. Since their departure they have experienced difficulties with
clearing these cheques through their banks.
My daughter continued to be assured that the projects in Zambia were assured,
that they were assisted by the Zambian government, and that the team members
currently in the field were operating successfully.
Because of a lot of research that our family had carried out (and the
horrible conditions that we saw in Dowagiac!) we discussed the issue with our
daughter and she made the, for her, difficult decision to leave IICD Michigan
with us. When we arrived home,
after a day-long drive, our daughter had received that day an e-mail from a
member of the team who was supposed to be in Zambia, but who had returned home.
She wrote that the real reason that she came home was because the HOPE
projects in Zambia were quickly turning into disasters.
The projects werent being funded; the volunteers werent receiving
their subsistence allowances on time (or were only receiving part of what they
needed to live). One week the
volunteers had nothing to eat but plain slices of white bread. The organization
was also taking unfair advantage of the African workers, who were the backbone
of the work on the project.
As I said
above, IICD/Tvind masquerades as an overseas development organization, but it
is, really, nothing but a racket that exploits dedicated volunteers and the
people they are trying to help. And
as my daughter put it, very succinctly: first
of all the organization lies all the time
You might be
thinking, but this is an isolated case, an isolated story
This could be a fair reaction to a personal experience, but I assure you
that my daughters experience is not unique! There is abundant evidence of
Tvinds corruption, which extends through all of its component organizations.
This can be found on a web site, at: http://www.tvindalert.org.uk
I urge you to investigate this site carefully, read the many newspaper
articles, first-hand accounts, police charges and other materials on this site,
and follow the links to other sites that investigate Tvind, IICD, and other of
its components. I am sure that,
when you have done so, you will conclude, as we did, that Tvind and its
creature-organizations must be excluded from university campuses everywhere.
Thank you for your attention and concern,