Jostein's story

by Jostein Alvestad <dagjostein@hotmail.com>
Chicago

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 even took me a minute to remember Ester Neltrup's name  -  that's how deep I have suppressed everything about my 5 years in the Teachers' Group.

I even kept defending them long after I left, and denied I had been in a cult or had in any form been "brainwashed".

I know better now - after a little time and distance.   Being back out in the real world really cleared my eyes!

Ester - the then Principal of IICD screamed "just leave!" to me while Michael Norling , who also lived there for a year , tried to keep me in the TG by offering me to be the principal of the new California campus! Since I started signaling my "friends" in the TG that I might get on with my life outside of the TG , I experienced all kinds of reactions from them, from extreme hate or golden promises, and people i had regarded as my closest friends stopped talking to me whatsoever. I was no longer to be trusted and "frozen out". They held meetings behind my back, and kept paperwork about new developments hidden when I entered the office building.

It was time for me to leave...

I would like to share my experiences. I did a search for IICD and found this site, I got a lump in my throat when I read Steen, Britta and Elses stories. I was not with the TG from the beginning, but I worked with many from the very first years and heard a lot of the same stories from them (in confidentiality). Thank you for getting the TRUTH out.

I was part of the Teachers Group for 5 years. 1994-1998.When I look back on what I did as part of this movement, I am not proud; I was in the end well aware that we were lying to our students at the schools and even helping them only tell half-truths in order to fund raise. I was part of cheating the authorities in any way we could get away with , and we fooled the public to gain a pretty decent share of the huge profits in the second- hand clothes market. We were deceitful in almost all aspects of our operations. In the three years since I left the group Its been hanging as a black cloud over my head. I suppressed everything that had to do with my five lost years but now I feel like I owe to my former students, friends and general public to do some explaining. What the hell happened to me, how could I change from an idealistic, honest volunteer until one that five years later was trapped in a network of lies and deceit?

I was all the time insisting to my family and friends outside of the TG that what we were doing was good, no - we were not a cult, and no - I have not been brainwashed! (It was just that i had so much to do that I could only come home one week a year) 

I first came in contact with the TG in fall 1993. I started as a Solidarity Worker in Hornsjoe, Norway (I am Norwegian in January 1994. I went as a volunteer to Guine-Bissau, knowing very little about the country or Development Aid from People to People(AKA Planet Aid, Humana or the Gaia Movement)

Our team dug 75 latrines and 10 wells in one of Africas poorest countries. For me the biggest shock was to return to a industrialized, almost decadent county where people just didn'tt care or wanted to hear about how 4 out of 5 people on this planet are living below the poverty line. I always had to think of my own path to recruitment, when we later on discussed if any of our students were ready for the TG yet. The practice of sending unsuspecting volunteers to the poorest countries in the world has since the start of the TG been a method of prime people to be ready to make the life changing decision it is to join the TG.

I was sure enough ready to continue doing good work. I mentioned to my teacher that I would like to continue working for the organization. They sent me to Denmark to see the different schools and talk to long-time members. I had all along noticed a great deal of amateurism within the organization and met quite a few TG members who were incompetent in their positions. After seeing more of the same in Denmark I was ready to leave without making any commitments with them. I told this to my host, the principal of the school in Lindersvold, and said that I expected to get on the train home the next morning. The next morning Steen Conradsen arrived at the school and the teachers there made a big deal out of that this TG big shot had taken time to meet with me. A teacher explained to me that Steen was one of the top people in the TG. His job is to travel all over to help with schools or projects in trouble. He takes over as executive director for a 6 months and turns around schools or projects that are about to fail. 

They sure built him up ,and I was pretty exited when we met. He seemed to be exactly what they had said: extremely intelligent and charismatic.

I met to him for four hours straight. He did listen to my concerns and he told me about some of the ideology of the TG . Yes, some of us are less able and we sometimes take on too big tasks - but where else in the world could anyone work in a system where you can do anything you want wherever you want in the whole world. This is exactly why we need more intelligent people like yourself -to improve and spread our alternative way of life. You can stay on the outside and criticize or you can enter a group of like minded people who have all dedicated their lives to Do Good. The TG provides start up capital for the life of your dreams and it is impossible to get fired! You will no longer have to worry about loans, insurance or social security - the TG provides for all that. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life if money was no obstacle. If I could picture my ideal life what would it be? 

I said that I would like to travel all over the world, to learn and to help people. I am not religious or belie in any sort of afterlife. I think we all have one chance to live here on earth and want to do my best to change the conditions for other more unfortunate people. He said that this is what they thought about in the beginning of the TG also. How could people free themselves from the ties of the capitalistic society and do what they really wanted ? - By creating their own independent society. A group of 20 people met in the late sixties and early seventies to explore a totally new way of relating to each other. The common was to be set in front of the individual. The true democracy was when all decisions were made in common - and everyone agrees. 

So paradoxically,the most important of your individual freedoms - your time, your money, your decisions - has to be given to the common to decide if you want to be free from the normal ties of the society. But instead of creating an elitist utopia - anyone who decides they want to join can join! This is why we are in no way perfect as you say, but we are a long step ahead of anyone else. Imagine what you can do with the power behind 20 yearly salaries, or 200, or 2000! We have farms all over the world, we run our own clothes factory in Morocco, we have a TV crew who sail around the world making documentaries, we have doctors and scientists even our own art museum and symphony orchestra!We are not revolutionaries, or a secret society . But we do want to change the world. When they hear about us, people can decide if this is something they want to be a part of or not. We dont force anyone, and I wont be sad if you or anyone else decide to go on living their lives outside of the TG. 

The way it works is that anyone who wants to join the TG , does so on a trial period of two years. He or she can then decide if this is something they want to continue to be committed to. They extend their commitment from a two year agreement to an indefinite agreement. It is not a written contract, we call it an agreement - your word is enough. In the TG we value a mans word, maybe more than out in the rest of the society. If you promise something in the TG , you have to keep it. 

I decided to try it for the two years, and was sent to Grindsted to be sworn in. I was read the same speech as all the other teacher group members where you say yes to common time, common economy and common decisions. Then ,as the first of many surprises, there actually was a few things to sign, but in the excitement over joining I would certainly not make a fuss. The timing of this was perfect -I had decided to join, just been sworn in and they downplayed these documents that was presented for me to sign, (all in Danish) They said it was just to keep our common bookkeeping easier and so they could do my takes for me etc. The papers I signed gave them authority to sign documents for me, and allowed them to use my use my name in bank transactions, they can put my name on a board of trustees or representatives for an organization without having to inform me first. I asked them to explain, and they said that this was a way for the TG to keep most of our hard earned money, we try to manage our funds as good as we can, and pay as little tax as we can. It is the same as any individual would do , but since we are a group it really helps when there are just a few good economists who works full time to take care of the economy in the best way we can. The other members can then spend more time on what they want to do. Of course everything we do is legal, but why should we be punished for pooling our money? The society is built up around the core family, and have all kinds of laws and regulations that hassles a bigger unit of people. We have taken the decision to live our lives together in our way, and we do not want to be punished by paying extra to the government for our choice. When i left the TG i requested to have all my paperwork, and documents sent back to me. I did never get the documents I signed (or copies of them) back, but they sent me my tax records and a letter that stated that my file now is empty and closed. I guess I will never know how much my name was being used, but just from the tax records I received it states that I received money from the Danish government as a teacher in government supported Traveling Folk High Schools, the course I led lasted 11 months, 6 of these we were in Africa, where the papers I now have show that I also had a salary as a project leader (31,000 a year) . I remember signing that I had received my salary on a document that showed the transactions from Development aid from People to People (now Humana/or the Gaia Movement) s account to a private TG bank account in Switzerland! I also had the maximum allowed tax deductible gift to a foundation - which happened to be the the Foreningen til almene formal .This is also where we sent our regular salaries, and from where we got travel and pocket money as we needed it. 

I lead teams from Denmark to Guine Bissau and from the US to Nicaragua. We traveled to Sweden, Norway,Great Britain, Finland and Germany with students for work at the second hand stores or canvassing. During my five years in the TG I fund raised about 40 weeks. Everyday up to 10 hours of aggressive street solicitation or door to door canvassing. This is part of every groups training and is how the US schools get the money to run their programs. The primary goal is money, but it also have a secondary effect on the people who do it, and I am not sure how intentional it is - but this is where I can see similarity to brainwashing: Every day , for long periods of time, you have to approach strangers and try to convince them about what you are doing is good. So good in fact that they are willing to give you cash or a check to help you and your group in your work. Everyone has a goal to reach and we are not quitting until all the money is raised. Each person on has to raise $5,600 in seven weeks, and we left it pretty much up to the individuals exactly what they said to get the donations. You dont really know a whole lot about your organization, or exactly where the money goes. You have a binder that shows the 501C3(non-profit) registration, the city or village permit,articles and letters of recommendations. About 20% quit the program because of the fund raising experience. The rest convince themselves of what you we doing is really good, or at least that the reward - going to Nicaragua or Africa is worth it. That is the effect it had on me, anyway . 

Even after I saw how most of the money we raised went to the TG, and the other branches of the TG also just seemed to generate an income for ourselves , I justified it by thinking that the then the TG gets more money to expand and start other good things. 

This is in essence why I stayed with the group as long as i did. I had the basic notion that we were doing something good for the world. This made me ignore the lies . We felt we were above the law. We were true revolutionaries , an elite, way ahead of normal people. We were a group of people who had dedicated our lives to our way of creating an new society. 

We had an unwritten rule: to try to deal as little with authorities and governments as possible. The goal seemed to be to be totally cut off or independent from the rest of the world. We even had our own fruit-of-the month thing going, where some of the TG plantations sent boxes of fruit to us. Each step in expanding the TG s power was therefore good. 

A significant amount of money find their way to the TG trough what on the surface are non-profit organizations. That actually do help people, which makes for a great cover-up and motivates people to support it, but the TG do a lot of selling and buying between themselves, both with clothes and services, and the profit, rent and salaries from all these operations go to our common economy. 

We were pretty frank about this when we discussed budgets among ourselves in the TG. We looked at the budgets in two ways: How can we make sure that the TG benefits most from this, and how do we make sure that no outsiders can prove that this is happening. 

For example when I transferred to the US on a tourist visa, I could only help as a volunteer without salary. We solved this by giving another teacher a 100% raise to make sure that the TG wouldn't loose money on me. I was listed as an unpaid volunteer in all official documents, and I had to explain for my teams not to call me team leader or teacher when we crossed the borders. 

When IICD started in the US a mailbox-company in Jersey, UK (a tax-haven) bought the grounds and buildings, so the TG actually collect rent from themselves. We justified this by saying that it is nobody else business who really have the ownership. One company can legally own and rent a piece of land to another. It is nobody elses business who the people who controls the company is and who they are friends with. Legally, nobody can tell people what to do with their privately owned money. Why should it be wrong for people to share? 

Legally we were untouchable, but IICD/Humana/Gaia etc. is dependent on the fact that the public does not know who they really are.

Here is just a few personal stories from the top of my head:  I was forced to lie to my students by the rest of the teachers at IICD , (Ester, Michael, Mattias and Uli) Mattias and I had "slipped up" and told some of our students that we really owned the place as members of the TG. There was a big uproar amongst the students - who of course were bright enough to realize that a significant amount of their fees and fundraising went into our pockets -since IICD pays rent for the property and buildings to Argyll -Smith.

They held a big "common meeting" to try to calm the students and denounce any TG involvement with Argyll- Smith.

I told Ester at the pre meeting that I did not want to be part of directly lying to the students. Of course they all attacked me, asking where my solidarity was, with the students or the TG? and that it was non of their business who owned Argyle - Smith. All I had to do was to pretend I didn't know. I am ashamed to say that I sat trough the meeting with the students and listening to the teachers lie and the students accusations being right on. A few students didn't believe us and left. This happens almost with every group at every TG school I have been involved with when they get a hint of that something is wrong with the way things are being presented.

Another recollection -  when leading a team from The Traveling Folk High School in South Sealand to Guinea Bissau - we did another little salary cheat. While 6 months in Guinea-Bissau, the TG got my salary as a teacher for the group I led abroad.  Dag Rune Hauglund, The Country Director, had me sign a contract where I was employed as a Project Leader  .I later was sent a earnings record document , from Grindsted, with a note to sign and return it. It said I had earned $31,000 in that period and my salary had been sent to a Swiss bank account!

I thought that was amusing , so I took a copy of it , (which I still have)

I first came in contact with the TG in fall 1993. I started as a Solidarity worker in Hornsjoe, Norway (I am Norwegian) in January 1994 I went to Guine-Bissau, and was ready for more! I joined the TG on a two year contract which i later changed to a 5 year contract. I lead teams at DRH Sydsjaelland, to Guine Bissau, took trips to Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, Finland and Germany with students for work with Fundraising ,The Flea Market, UFF -work ,Olympics and more fundraising. I saw most of the TG places in DK, before I went to IICD , Massachusetts and led two 11 months teams to Nicaragua. I have so many stories from this part of my life, I don't know where to begin!

It feels great to being able to share this to people who were in it with me. I look forward to hearing from you, and maybe write more as a way to expose, warn others or just to a form of self therapy concerning my 5 "lost "years.

I live in Chicago, happily married and work as a firefighter. I haven't told many of my new friends about my past. It is kind of embarrassing to admit I spent 5 years in a cult. 

Keep up the good work.