Gita's story

Some might say that asking questions is wrong, but not in this case, I was determined to find out who I would be working for, I wanted to know who the Managers or the top guys of Humana were and I wanted to know whether they knew who I was or was I just another statistic a solidarity worker from New Zealand.

I started out asking several students from one of the Danish schools about the organisation Humana and discovered they all had a robotic answer and that was we dont really know Humana, as long as we are going to be doing good work in Africa we dont see the need to find out who they are I noticed this was the usual answer given by several students and was a bit confused as to why nobody questioned anything about this mystery company that is supposed to send us to africa to do volunteer work.

The school produced a monthly budget report and we found that the fundraising money that we raised selling newspapers was not accounted for, I then asked where is was, to my surprise they said oh we shall put it in next time, the next time came and then the staff told us that the money does not go for the projects in Africa but for the running of the school. Some of the students became suspicious and thought okay so where is the fundraising money against the budget same reply oh we have not put it in

Information in general about their teaching methods went through my mind constantly, the fact that we had absolutely no time for anything was a lot of pressure at the beginning, when we asked for help it was suggested that another student could help instead.

Then information about the headquarters in Zimbabwe made us think twice there are supposedly only 18 staff, and they are housed in a huge building all decked out with laptops and cellphones. Then after meeting some of the members staff in Denmark or from those who 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?.

A fellow student then found some information about Humana/Tvind and it was not favourable, governments had banned the organisation from the company, journals and newspapers had written several different articles mentioning money misused, this not being what we could have ever imagined.

By now our dreams were falling apart at the seams, we should just continue and find out other information as soon as possible. Christmas reared another students concerns and we found several other bits of information, including the Tvind Alert website.

For me personally I found the mystery company Argylle Smith and Co letter addressed to the college, then when found out that the company had a connection to Tvind all sorts of things ran through our minds, we discussed several possibilities and then finally decided to confront the members of staff at CICD and then found that they did not tell us the truth, it was very practised and fake.

                                                                                   Gita, New Zealand