"A bunch of Stalinists...."

Hi, Great site!!  Keep up the wonderful work.  Reading through the stories on the site does bring back a lot of thoughts and memories.  I was on IICD's program to Nicaragua during 1989-1990 in a group headed by Eric Newman. It was the 2nd or 3rd year of IICD and we were the first group to move into the Williamsburg facility. I think we were lucky because it was only the first year that the Danes were in full force and the Tvind mentality had yet to really take hold. Still an authoritarian and "its-best-not-to-question" mentality was evident in the way that Eric attempted to run our group and the way the Danes in general controlled the school.

It was such a crazy experience. I remember some crazy talks where Mikael Noring promoted the glories of North Korea, presented a just plain bizarre history of rice cultivation, and argued that Pol Pot wasn't so bad!! It would have been amusing accepted for the fact that he honestly believe what he was saying.

I now characterize IICD as a bunch of Stalinists who were very interested in communal living and decision making as long as we all agreed to what Ester and Mikael had already decided. In particular, IICD was very insistent that all participants do door to door canvassing because it was the most efficient way to meet the "target goal". Of course, it was never really clear what the basis for the goal was and we were strongly discouraged from exploring that or looking into alternative fund-raising techniques.

My group was lucky because the five months we spent in Nicaraguan was organized in partnership with a real development non-profit on the ground in Nica. They actually had experience, expertise, and had put together a good project for us to work on. I just shutter to think what it would have been like if we had been on the groups that went to Angola and Mozambique  which were working with the Tvind group. I know a couple of people who simply left the African projects when it became evident that not much of value was taking place.

We never really had any idea of how IICD finances worked and the money that had been budgeted to our group had a habit of disappearing or changing with little explanation. For example, in Nicaragua, Eric told us that part of our group's traveling budget would come from the sale of a broken down schoolbus that IICD had left down their the previous year!!

In the end, I think about half of the people in all the groups (Nica, Moz, Angola, Cent. America, and Brazil) who started out left by end of the program. My group started with 13 but only half came back to IICD after the five months in Nica. Of the 7 remaining most of us left after a few weeks.

It was just too frustrating to continue to deal with Eric, IICD and their mounting pile of contradictions and obfuscations.

The thing that I think IICD is most guilty of taking young, idealistic, altruistic people and then exposing them to an extremely manipulative and controlling lifestyle while telling them that this is what alternative development and communal living is all about. In the end participants in their programs can either adopt the same manipulative techniques or leave disillusioned. I'm just happy that I was also interacting with other groups and people working on development so it was obvious just how screwy IICD's approach was.

I would strongly, strongly advise anyone interested in IICD to look into other programs. The IICD sales pitch is very alluring and they use all the right keywords, but the day to day reality is completely different. There are a lot of good organizations out there which will help you volunteer in overseas development programs and don't come with the weird baggage of IICD. (Check out http://www.volunteerinternational.org/ or http://www.lafetra.org/ for listings.)

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Thanks for doing such a great job at putting out info on IICD and Tvind. Please let me know if there is anything I could do to help.

P.S. Please feel free to post this on your website