📚 Historical Archive Notice
This content is from the original TvindAlert.com (2001-2022), preserved for historical and research purposes. Some images or documents may be unavailable.
Quick links
The Humana World Empire
Humana in the USA
Humana in Brazil
Coming soon
About "Tvind"
What is 'Tvind?'
'Tvind' is a self-styled educational movement, founded in 1970 in Denmark as a radical alternative to conventional society, but now a global phenomenon. It takes its overall title from a small farm deep in the countryside of western Denmark, outside the town of Ulfborg, where it established its first headquarters in 1972.
From its origins as a single, alternative teacher training college, Tvind has developed over 35 years into a vast and wealthy international organisation in all five continents, encompassing schools, foreign aid projects, used clothes recycling enterprises, charities and environmental schemes, but also highly profitable manufacturing, commerce, property dealing, ship broking, and perhaps most controversially of all, logging and commercial fruit farming on highly exploitative Third World plantations.
Active in more than 50 countries, it is now an immensely wealthy multinational, with a huge annual turnover from an admixture of charity and commerce, and millions of dollars stashed in foreign bank accounts and offshore tax havens.
Tvind Alert was launched by a London-based journalist, Mike Durham, and first published on the Internet as Tvind Alert. It was started in late 1999, and has been added to, corrected and expanded by hundreds of correspondents since. You can read the story of the site here.
The original aim was to solve a mystery. What really is Tvind, and who runs it? Under its various names, is it a recycling charity, a volunteering organisation, a school system, a political movement, a secret society, a money-making business - or a cult? None of these - or all of them?
Does it benefit, or exploit, those who work for it, fund it, and supposedly receive its help?
We believe we now have the answers. Along the way we have discovered many interesting facts and there have been many dramatic developments. In 2000, Danish police raided Tvind, and the following year the founder, Mogens Amdi Petersen, was arrested in exile in California and extradited back to Europe. Today he and several other Danish Tvind leaders are on trial in Denmark on fraud charges.
Many of Tvind's assets in Denmark have been confiscated or put into administration by Danish legal authorities. But that is not the end of the story. Across the world, beyond the jurisdiction of European governments and police, dozens of foreign bank accounts, offshore trusts, companies, agricultural plantations and other valuable properties are still controlled by Tvind.
Although many of Tvind's secrets are now revealed, we believe much has yet to be uncovered, especially in areas where Tvind has not been properly investigated by other authorities. That is the reason for this site.
Frede Jakobsen (Denmark). Danish journalist, now working on the newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende. A reporter on various Danish newspapers since 1968, who has covered the Tvind story for many years. Former editor in chief on the daily "Land og Folk", former Head of Information in the Danish Third World NGO, Ibis, former adviser for Radio Zinica in Bluefields, Nicaragua. Contact: frede.jakobsen@tdcadsl.dk . Telephone (Denmark) 40 14 52 90
Marianna Maver (USA). American former employee of the Tvind-run International School Ake Pecha, a residential treatment facility for emotionally disturbed minor wards of the courts of Virginia (1984 '85). She brought the questionable practices at the International School to the attention of Virginia authorities, which resulted in the recession of the school's license in July of 1985. Contact: maver@wmol.com Tel (USA) ( 269) 857-4170.
Zahara Heckscher (USA) . Co-author of How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas (Penguin Books, 2002). She has conducted research on Tvind since 1987, when she was one of the first volunteers to travel to Africa with Tvind's U.S. school, IICD. Her research includes unauthorized visits to Tvind projects in Zambia and Zimbabwe, where the group has ties with President Robert Mugabe. Contact: peacepeace@compuserve.com . Tel: +1 202-489-8908 (US cellphone)
We welcome the interest of other concerned individuals.
WIKIPEDIA ON TVIND
A recent entry on 'Tvind' from the online encyclopaedia WIKIPEDIA:
'Tvind' is a controversial organisation, purportedly involved in development aid. It is accused of being a cult. Founded in Denmark by Mogens Amdi Petersen, it collects used garments from the public and sells them in Europe, South America and Africa. It also runs a number of schools. Tvind holds a large number of properties around the world.
"There are many organisations affiliated with Tvind, including Humana People to People, Planet Aid, U'SAgain, Gaia, and Green World Recycling. Humana People to People often advertises for volunteers from Europe and North America to work in the Third World.
"Mogens Amdi Petersen and other prominent members of the Teachers' Group are currently facing fraud charges in a Danish court."
The man who invented 'Tvind':
MOGENS AMDI PETERSEN
Archive Info
Recovered from:
Wayback snapshot 2006-07-08
Versions found: 5
Content: 5,768 chars
Links: 23
Images: 5