A Finnish story

A young woman volunteer at first wrote the story below in great detail and sent it to Tvind Alert.   But she came under a lot of negative pressure due to her loyalty to her friends - other members of the same 'team'.  Although she considered they were being exploited and wanted to help them, they felt SHE had betrayed THEM.    As a result of this pressure, she has asked Tvind Alert to disguise her identity and that of the school.    They were apparently prepared to accept what she couldn't - and succeeded in preventing discussion of the situation.

The story:

I'm a student in one of Tvind's schools. The school is located in Denmark.  I joined the program 3-4 weeks ago  because I saw Humana's announcement in the Internet about that they are looking  for people who want to volunteer in Africa.
 
I would like to tell you my story and perhaps get some information about  what I can do to help my other team members.
 
I studied in a business school in Helsinki last year but I found the people very superficial and I felt that the only thing they thought about was money. So I wanted to do something else and I found this announce. I called Humana late in the evening and they were very nice and positive and  welcoming. I was so surprised about that I could call them at 11pm and they  would answer and sound like that! I thought that it must be something very  good and important as these people are always possible to reach.
 
They told me that there was this TCE Botswana team which was going to start  in a couple of days - perhaps I could come and join the team in two days?   It didn't matter if I couldn't pay all the money yet - I would do fundraising in the streets and earn the rest of the money. Of course I  needed to pay something as well - 1500 Euros. And I would get a scholarship  of 1000euros. Wow, I thought, this sounds good...
 
So, I told my teachers that I wasn't coming to the school this year but  that I would go to Africa, I told my friends and parents, I packed my stuff  and I just left.
 
In the beginning, it was nice. a lot of young people from different countries (but nobody from Denmark or Sweden...), everybody with the  enthousiasm about going to Africa and helping people, getting this AIDS
education, doing something GOOD, something which really means something...
 
Yeah. That was the beginning. The first weekend, there were the Tvind  summer olympics, first for us (DRH schools) and then for some children. We were told that we were going to fundraise by working in the Kids Summer  Olympics - we would be cooking for two days.
 
And so we cooked. We made thousands of hamburgers, chicken&fries, meatballs. We cleaned and we did basically everything. We worked from 7am  till 10pm. Never saw the money but of course we were told that we got money  for doing all this. But we were SO TIRED.
 
After the weekend, we came back to Holsted. Now we were going to start the STUDIES, finally. We were given a week plan and told everything we were going to do in the education period. Studies, projects... and fundraising.
 
I will try to make this short but it's hard because there is just SO much crap to tell. However, the studies are self studies. They have this  ridiculous database with different tasks and we are supposed to do them by ourselves. That's how we will learn about AIDS. Then we just send them to the teacher and she says if it's ok or not. You get points for the tasks  (there are some interesting ones where you have to read an article about AIDS and then answer the questions but many of them are just worth nothing...like doing your own fitness program and following it will give u  points). You get points for doing anything here. Everything is about counting points. But the most alarming fact is that you get a lot more points for cooking or cleaning than for really STUDYING.

They also give us courses. We ve had some interesting guest speakers as  well. One was about AIDS in Africa - a woman from the TG, it was very  interesting. Then there was a guy telling us how U.S. government wants to  rule the world and how Bush is the worst terrorist of the world  (well, of course there are many points of view but his opinions were very strong and accusing). I suppose he was also a member of the TG. Then our own teachers give us some courses (like twice a week) but these courses are just  nonsense. They just pick a title and make a course, without even knowing  what they r going to say. One example was a course called The Difference Between Dialogue and Quarrelling. The teacher just asked our opininons,  wrote them down and then... he just didn't know what to say. He forgot it.   He said to us "Sorry, I just forgot my point..." and looked out through the  window. Everybody was trying to avoid laughing, he was so ridiculous. But so he read a couple of poems to us and started asking us about authors whose books we had read and if we found something common between his title
 and the authors' books. So UNBELIEVABLE.
 
Then there is this rule "No drugs, no alcohol". In the beginning, everybody  thought that of course we cannot drink or anything. But then, after a while, when they don't have any program for us, the town is small, the tasks they give to us are ridiculous, (like eg. to build a fence for two ponnies that the headmaster just bought one day without any preplanning...just because she thought they were cute) of course people start finding other ways how to spend their time. And so we started drinking in our rooms in the evenings... and NOBODY cared. Nobody noticed. It is so obvious that people are doing that kind of stuff but there is no  reaction to it.
 
I have a good friend in Copenhagen, a Danish guy who is studying his  Masters in the Copenhagen business school. I wanted to go and see him and I asked my teacher one week in advance if it was possible. Of course the answer was "no, not really, we don't really think it's a good idea cos we should go fundraising soon and you should be here planning it..." So I thought that I couldn't go but I was wondering "why? What do we do here? Nothing. People are just bored. They sleep all the days. There is no real program. The exams are not hold and the week plans are not followed. Why couldn't I go? I'm an adult, after all." And so I just told them a couple of days before that I was going to Copenhagen for some days. And they couldn't do anything about it. I mean, that's not a reason why you can throw somebody out from the program.
 
So I went there, met my Danish friend, told that this is a Tvind school and... his reaction was the same as I think everybody's in Denmark He said "I didn't know it was one of THOSE schools!!!" And I asked what he meant and he said "we,, EVERYBODY in Denmark knows Tvind and the Travelling High Schools". And so I started thinking. I found the Tvindalert pages, read them, called my parents, they read the pages, then they phoned me and said  that I should stop the program.
 
First I said that I just want to go to Africa. But after all, I have heard  that the drop out procentage is 80%. So 9 of my team would stop before January (We are 12 people). Everything I've read in Tvindalert pages fits in my picture of this organisation. There are lots of things you tell about which happen here every day. The isolation. The tasks. The fundraising. The teachers are really strange and feels like they've been brainwashed. Also the few people who actually come back from Africa are strange.
 
So, I decided to quit. I have options in my life, I speak several languages and will restart my studies next year anyway. But most of these people don't really have options. They don't have higher education, everybody hasn't even finished their secondary schools. Some of them come from Eastern Europe and they see this as their only possibility to ever see Africa. In addition, they have already worked in Netup and don't want to give up after doing that. So it's easy for me to quit, my family supports me. But these people... When they listen to what I tell them or read Tvindalert pages they just get confused. They are really frustrated here and hate all the teachers and points system and everything but... they don't have options or don't see them.
 
I came from Copenhagen yesterday and I'm going home tomorrow or after tomorrow. I haven't told my teachers yet, but I'm afraid cos I will have to discuss the money, I payed them 1000euros and I really don't think I'll get them back. What do you think? I do have a receipt but this is all so dizzy, I don't really know if the receipt is worth anything anyway.
 
So... it was a long story. If you can help me, want to know more, want to contact the others... feel free to do it. My feelings are really mixed at the moment. I just feel cheated and really disappointed to the fact that
after all, it's all about getting MONEY.