BBC Transcipt (part 1)

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

FACE THE FACTS: Aid College

Presenter: John Waite

TRANSMISSION: FRIDAY 22ND AUGUST 2008 1230-1300 BBC RADIO 4
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DAVID ROSE BUSKING

WAITE
David Rose there turned to earning a living busking after quitting his college course. A course supposed to prepare him to do worthwhile work in the developing world.
Nothing that unusual for an idealistic young man in his 20s. What is unusual is the college he and his partner left after just two months - to be followed by 10 fellow students, who found its strict insistence on money raising mind numbing, and not so much a college course as an endurance test.

ROSE
The working day - you had a morning spot - half past eight in the morning - this transpires to be what the teachers saw on the television the previous night. There's nothing, there's no information, nothing. You're constantly kept busy - you have breakfast after that, if you're preparing the breakfast you get up at seven o'clock in the morning and you dish the breakfast out, then afterwards you wash up as well. And then you're sent out on the street to fundraise. By that I mean selling magazines. Begging in the street, you sell these magazines for £2.

WAITE
The institution which David Rose joined last September is one of the most unusual and controversial educational establishments in the country. It claims to prepare students to do invaluable work in the developing world - yet its qualifications and training are not recognised by organisations like Oxfam or Voluntary Service Overseas.

Its literature - complete with pictures of African children - bears all the hallmarks of a developing world charity - yet in fact it's a company, albeit not-for-profit. It publishes no detailed accounts and students we have spoken to are unclear about where the money is going.

And far from it being a learning institution, former students of the College for International Co-operation and Development, based at Patrington near Hull, have told us not of lectures and seminars but of long days slogging the streets to raise ever more cash. And there's no respite in the evening.

ROSE
As soon as you come back from fundraising there's games - singing to do - and this goes on till one o'clock in the morning. So you go back absolutely shattered and then you're up again first thing in the morning, there's no relaxation, there's no time to gather your thoughts, they keep you constantly occupied.

WAITE
Indeed former students of the college posted one of its musical evenings on You Tube - under the less than flattering title of CICD Freak Study Weekend.

CLIP - YOU TUBE
Singing

WAITE
Today we investigate complaints that this self-styled College for International Co-Operation and Development is virtually brain-washing students - by controlling their lives and imposing a gruelling workload. Students who've sometimes paid nearly £3,000 to enrol. We'll hear of the college's close links to a controversial company involved in the lucrative business of collecting and selling on second-hand clothes - and to an even more controversial organisation, Tvind, also known as "the Teachers Group" based in Denmark.

Well I'm now standing outside Winestead Hall, which is a sprawling complex of buildings, including right opposite me a two-storey country house covered in ivy. The place is about 20 miles east of Hull, it's set in 30 acres of beautiful parkland and it's just a stone's throw, if you go down the main drive there, to the Humber estuary and the sea. A former mansion with walled gardens and stables dating back to the 1700's, Winestead Hall has also served as a mental hospital. But today the house is home to the College for International Co-operation and Development. And before that from 1989 until 1998, it was a school.

DURHAM
It was originally a school for what we might call emotionally disturbed children.

WAITE
Journalist Mike Durham has followed the history of Winestead Hall closely.

DURHAM
Very, very disruptive children whom local authorities could not manage. And they paid to board and educate these children, so they were doing a public service. The point that needs to be made though is that they were earning a huge amount of money doing this. These figures come from a long time ago but I think it was something like £700 a week for each child and there were between 20 and 40 children at the school. They were making a vast amount of money.

WAITE
What happened to that money became a subject of growing concern even inside the school. Steen Thomsen was its principal from 1991 to 1998 and, for some of its sailing activities, for example, he couldn't understand why the school had to rent boats ever year from Tvind, that organisation in Denmark, rather than buy them outright.

THOMSEN
I discovered that a ship which were hiring was 47 feet long, sailing boat, one of them, this ship which I realised would cost £80,000 on the market in England. But this amount we paid annually. Altogether we had four ships - two big sailing vessels and two smaller ones.

WAITE
In fact, documents we've seen suggest that the school based at Winestead Hall, and another in Norfolk, paid up to £7.7 million a year for the leasing arrangement.

But the sailing trips, along with skiing trips, and visits abroad, attracted growing criticism and in 1994 the then Health and Social Services Secretary, Virginia Bottomley, ordered an inquiry. The Charity Commission also took an interest and began its own investigation into the school and into a linked charity Humana UK, which was recycling clothes. The commission told us:

CHARITY COMMISSION STATEMENT
We discovered concerns relating to high administrative costs and the level of control over funds sent to Africa. Our inquiry led to the appointment of four additional independent trustees.

Those trustees forced the charity to close and new trustees were also appointed to run the school and were not impressed with what they found.

STATEMENT CONTINUES
The new trustees approached the commission with serious concerns about the welfare and safety of the children at the school and stated that the school should not be allowed to continue to operate.

So, the school that was here closed in January 1998 and Winestead Hall, here on the outskirts of Hull, entered a new phase. A college training volunteers to work in the developing world. The students changed, but many of those running the place did not.

PROMOTIONAL ADVERT
Training at CICD ...

The College for International Co-operation and Development

PROMOTIONAL ADVERT CONTINUES
...will qualify you to do development work in Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia or India. You have 14 months in front of you of education, training, fun and experiences, challenges, hard work and a sense of achievement. Go for it full blast, and it will be a "life changing" experience.

Although, as we say, those behind the college didn't change. The school was run by that Danish organisation, Tvind, so is the new college. The school buildings and grounds were owned by Tvind. Ditto the college. The current college principal is Karen Barsoe, formerly the accountant at the school and one time teacher there, Rolf Jakobsson, is now employed at the college. Mike Durham again:

DURHAM
What happened was that the school had originally been one kind of charity and it simply closed down as that charity and reopened with a different purpose but run by the same organisation on the same site with some of the same staff, all the same facilities. There was little taxpayers' money going into this college but at the same time there is very little oversight over it because it is a private college for over 16 year olds.

WAITE
And those young people have two ways of joining it. They can pay £2,800 to go straight onto the so-called Development Instructor course. They then have to raise usually around £2,500 more to fund an overseas trip. Or they can opt for a "Gaia Scholarship Programme" - paying a £250 registration fee up front, and then working for the college to raise the further £2,000 for the course. They're also asked to pay £650 for "travel expenses" - though the contract we've seen doesn't specify what that's for.

Mike Nelson, who's 22, is one of those who joined the Gaia scholarship scheme in 2004 and, despite everything that was to come, completed the CICD course.

NELSON
I actually wanted to do voluntary work, to see a different country, travel. I was living quite a hectic lifestyle, I was doing karate for several years, I was a black belt, fighting in European and World championships; I was at college; I had two part-time jobs ...

WAITE
And why CICD? How did you hear about them?

NELSON
This was in the Sun newspaper. There was not many in the Sun newspaper so I was quite surprised at seeing their advertisement.

WAITE
And what was it about the advertisement that you liked?

NELSON
It was volunteers wanted, no experience needed, apply within.

WAITE
Mr Nelson looked forward to learning how to help the developing world - as promised on the college's website.

PROMOTIONAL CLIP
Training will qualify you to do development work in Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia or India. You have 14 months in front of you full of education, training, fun and experiences, challenges and hard work.

Well, it was the "hard work" Mr Nelson remembers most. Cooking, cleaning floors, fridges, freezers - and his special responsibility..

NELSON
They had a sewage works, just outside the school campus, that had to be cleaned, this is where human disposal was. So someone had to clean this and this was actually my role for six months. So that was quite tough.

WAITE
Did you ever think of leaving?

NELSON
Many times.

WAITE
Why didn't you?

NELSON
I didn't want to be classed as a failure in my dad's eyes. I wanted to go to Africa actually.

WAITE
Mike Nelson finally left the course after six months in Hull and six months in Malawi. And married a fellow development instructor he'd met in Malawi who was from a college in Denmark also run by the Tvind.

Both Mike and his partner, however, grew disenchanted with the African operation, and in particular with the mountains of second-hand clothes, all charitably donated, which were being simply sold to the locals.

NELSON
I believed they were donated until I got to Malawi. Sacks of clothes would come, they would sort them out into sections and sell them to market vendors and before that they actually separated the clothes out, so like they picked the good stuff out and sell it in their shops.

WAITE
The website for "Humana People to People" - yet another member of the Tvind organisation - boasts…

HUMANA PEOPLE TO PEOPLE PROMOTION
Clothes and shoe sales in the northern, central and southern region of Malawi are generating funds for development projects in Malawi and providing many Malawians with good quality second-hand clothing…

And that clothing operation is another major feature of the finances of the Tvind Organisation. Humana UK - the charity that was closed down - was well known across the country for its second-hand clothes collection service via door-to-door leaflets asking for old clothes for the developing world.

And right now students of the college at Winestead Hall are busy working for an identical scheme to leaflet homes and pick up unwanted items.

CICD PROMOTION
Clothes and shoes collection. YOU can help us by donating your surplus clothes and shoes that can be used again…

A leaflet posted in Beverley in Yorkshire only this week.

CICD PROMOTION CONTINUED
We raise funds for training volunteers to work at development projects in Africa and India. We send volunteers to Angola, Botswana, India, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. We teach and take action against the spread of HIV and Aids. We care for street children and orphans.
 

Part 2