Around the county, green donation boxes are appearing with the name “Gaia Project.” I believe this organization is dubious and is not a reputable charity. The problem is, these boxes are multiplying in our county, and many highly rated charities are missing out on donations put into Gaia boxes. Plus the kindhearted people who donate might not have any idea to whom they donate.
— Anonymously annoyed
Boy are you cynical, Anonymously. Didn’t you know that if you paint it green and stick a happy Earth graphic on it, it’s automatically “environmental”?
It takes virtually no digging online to turn up a vast amount of, well, let’s call it troubling information and allegations about the organization that has deployed them. Most of this material is years old, so we’re a little uneasy passing it right along.
But here it is: Gaia Movement USA, based in Chicago, has been linked to a Danish organization called Tvind, or The Teachers’s Group. It purports to gather and sell used clothes and shoes in order to support environmental charities and train teachers to work in impoverished Africa. But The Chicago Tribune and other media have repeatedly underlined the flimsiness of that claim and the shadiness of the group’s history and leadership, several members of whom have been indicted, but not convicted, on charges related to money laundering, embezzlement and criminal tax evasion schemes in Denmark.
Meanwhile, words like “scam” and even “cult” keep coming up, and so do lousy grades for transparency, charity and spending on verifiable environmental projects from organizations including The American Institute of Philanthropy, CharityWatch.org and the Better Business Bureau. According to some former teacher trainees and staffers who speak out in news reports, their mandatory highest priority was always raking in bucks for the organization via those green boxes.
We can’t claim our own deep investigation of the clothing and money trails; it’s apparent that far more powerful researchers than us have found that picture dizzying. That’s by design, according to people like British journalist Michael Durham, who operates a website called tvindalert.com and whose essential claim is that the donated clothes are actually sold at a steep profit and the profits mostly line the leaders’ pockets.
You can Google a May 2011 story in The Chicago Tribune that’s probably the clearest summary of a confusing and still-moving situation. Tvindalert.com is eager to hear from people who can help them chase the truth.
But the bottom line is this. Many nonprofit agencies, charities and dedicated thrift shops serving needy people right here in Clark County are eager for your “gently used” clothing donations — either to put them right to use or to resell them for truly charitable causes. The Arc of Clark County, Share, The Giving Closet, the Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, Goodwill, the Interfaith Treasure House and the Children’s Home Society are just a few. You can also try local school resource centers and food pantries.
Plus, go to Clark County’s waste reduction website for an exhaustive listing of local thrift stores, where your less-than-affluent neighbors save a few bucks while clothing themselves: www.clark.wa.gov/recycle/reduction.
