A Bizarre Shadow

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

             -Mark Twain

In 2007, after taking off a year to finish a novel, I started looking for work again. I came across a job on Craig’s List. It was a manager in training program for a company called Planet Aid, Inc. Planet Aid uses donation bins to collect clothes, shoes, toys and books. They sell these items and the profits fund development projects in the poorest countries around the world. As part of their manager in training program, the trainee got to go to Africa for three months and work at one of their projects, in order to see firsthand the good Planet Aid does. What I experienced was far more complicated than just that. Planet Aid has since cancelled this program. I think my team was the pilot. I’m sure it wasn’t cost effective. And of our group of seven or so, only one stayed on.  

As for me, at the time I didn’t really have a fascination with Africa per se. But I was intrigued that a job would offer such a unique opportunity. I couldn’t get my head around what that experience might be like. But I didn’t want to miss a life changing opportunity, to go to Africa for free! I had been lucky with Israel, so why not try again. I sent them my CV and cover letter and got a call.

I didn’t do my due diligence, didn’t do any real research past the company’s website. Over time, I came to find that Planet Aid was the American wing of another organization, Humana People to People. And this organization is run by members of a controversial organization called The Teacher’s Group (TG), sometimes known as Tvind. TG has been called a cult. They’ve also been accused of embezzlement, fraud and tax evasion by the Danish High Court. But who are they really? And are these allegations true?  

According to my wife—a former DNS member, the Teacher’s Group was started by a group of Danish hippies in the early 1970’s as a reaction against Denmark’s consideration of nuclear energy as part of their energy policy. The Danish government was going to hold a referendum on whether the country should embrace nuclear power. The Danish are a proud and independent people, big on referendums. They even voted down the Euro. They are still on the Danish Krone, and proud to be.

So a group of Danish hippies came together against nuclear energy, and built what they claim is the world’s first modern energy generating windmill.

They even claim to have invented specific design innovations such as the shape of the blades, the motor that turns in the direction of the wind, and others. My wife said she has seen pictures of people digging with spoons the hole that would become the windmill’s foundation. That windmill still powers their first school to this day. And nuclear power, according to The Teacher’s Group, was voted down in Denmark due to their efforts. They believe this is why Denmark is one of the leading countries in renewable energy today.

Energized from this great victory, they decided they wanted to do something more. This next part I learned from my old boss. They wanted to help people in the developing world. And they knew that what was shown on TV wasn’t real life. They wanted to go out and experience real life in other places, and see how they could help the poor of the world. So they got a bus and drove from Denmark to India, stopping many places along the way.

My former boss Jostein said that driving through Iran was the scariest part. The Iranian border guards asked if they had any liquor, pornography or anything morally irreprehensible. Since they didn’t, they were allowed to pass through. Next, they wound through tight mountain passes and tiny roads in the mountains of Afghanistan. They drove in shifts. Jostein drove the bus at times and remembers getting caught in a few places where the passes were too small to fit their big bus. They had to wiggle in and out to get through. Somewhere along the way they tore a hole in the oil pan. A local mechanic used “magic” some sort of liquid that formed a patch as it cooled. They continued their journey and made it to India.

They met many people, had amazing experiences and saw for themselves the way people were living in each place and region. They eventually traveled throughout Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. They started development projects to help people in need. And they began forming traveling folk schools, a new twist on a Danish tradition.

By law in Denmark, any group can start a school. All you need is to get your paperwork in order. No regulations exist. And the state funds these schools. The Teacher’s Group believed in John Dewey’s learning by doing, and created a radical program based on this. They started “Det Nᴓdvendige Seminarium” (DNS) in English, “The Necessary Teacher Training College.” They bought a piece of rural land in Denmark and named it Tvind for the twisty brook that runs through the property. They are sometimes known by this name. TG now has schools all over including one in the Caribbean, one in the Berkshires, one in Michigan, several in California, one in England and many, many other places. All of their schools and many of their projects look alike, almost as if they were the exact same building.

Radicals in their late teens and 20s, the lost, the perpetually strange and those way out-in-left-field come from all over Europe and farther afield, gathering at Tvind to join DNS. They now gather at the other schools too. They pay thousands to join. Then they take classes, do chores, projects, sell postcards on the street, or beg for donations which pushy TG’ers call “fundraising,” and travel to projects in different countries to learn and volunteer.

Mostly, those who come want to travel to Asia or Africa, or they need a place to get away from their parents or their old lives, or they just need some time and distance to sort things out. Most are from the hippie persuasion, or some similar counterculture lifestyle. But the school isn’t accredited. So graduating from DNS doesn’t mean anything outside of TG. But it means a lot inside the Teacher’s Group. Once you successfully go through the DNS program and graduate, you have the option of joining TG.

The Teacher’s Group formed an ideology based on absolute collectivism, utilizing the phrase, “Common time, common economy and common life.” No DNS or TG members are allowed to use alcohol or drugs as it messes up the individual and so the collective. And one of their core beliefs that in the modern world, people trade their time for money. They work at something they don’t like in order to make money, and do what they want on the weekend. Tvind members believe that they have eliminated this dichotomy. That what they want to do and their job is one. But what ends up happening is, they just work all the time, with little or no free time, and they expect anyone related to their enterprises to do the same.

The Teacher’s Group is supposed to be a horizontal collectivism. Everyone in the Teacher’s Group gets a vote. Everything is discussed and decided on collectively. But I’ve heard that in truth there is an inner circle that vote on everything, decide everything. Once you join TG you are supposed to give all of your financial assets then and henceforth to the collective pot. They give you healthcare and a place to live. But TG tells you where to live, where you will work, what you will do and so on. Some members get married and/or have children, but this is frowned upon.

Above them all may be a leader, Mogens Amdi Petersen—a charismatic speaker who has been in hiding for over twenty years. Last we heard he left a luxury apartment in Miami worth over a million dollars. 

When I asked a fellow coworker about this when I found out about it, she said it wasn’t his penthouse, and that they just wanted a nice place to meet. There are rumors of Tvind supporting Mugabe in order to get good business deals in Zimbabwe, supporting Pol Pot and Gaddafi and others. Amdi Petersen was arrested in 2002 in L.A., shipped back to Denmark and put on trial with seven other members, but none were convicted or saw jail time.

Though found not guilty, in Denmark the public prosecutor plans to bring them to trial again. As of May, Amdi and his inner circle will be tried once again in the Danish High Court for embezzlement and tax evasion.  When I finally found out about websites like Humana Watch and Tvind Watch and read about the trials, I asked my boss about it. He said that they do not have a leader, though Amdi is a part of the Teacher’s Group. Jostein said that TG votes on everything, and that the trial was a malicious plot by the Danish government to discredit them.

As The Teacher’s Group grew, it diversified. Its projects include fighting HIV/AIDS, preschools, farmer’s clubs, teacher training colleges and other charitable projects in sub-Saharan Africa, China, India and other locales. It has schools for special education students in Denmark, students who have gone through all the regular programs and have nowhere else to go. It has a plantation in Brazil and other holdings in South and Central America. It deals in the lucrative used clothing business all over the world. It was under the dark and puzzling shadow of the Teacher's Group that my job at Planet Aid and my time in Africa occurred.

My friend Don, who worked with us for a short time, has an Irish Catholic background. He said they were Protestants without an ethos. TG had kept the Protestant work ethic, but jettisoned all else, the deeper philosophy and faith that tied it all together. In the end, what occurred to me was that a group who got together to be more humane and care for the world ended up being just as callous and bloated with avarice as those they claimed to be against.