Encouraging participation
Building a bottle school is only possible through community participation on a mass scale. Collecting the 6,500 20-ounce soda bottles needed for a two classroom schoolhouse, and stuffing them full of inorganic trash, takes a lot of people working together. With just a small number of people, it’s simply not possible!
Motivating kids and parents to collect and stuff bottles can be done by them seeing and feeling the excitement emanating from the community leaders, and from people such as yourself. If you communicate well, everyone will be happy to contribute their time collecting trash because they will understand that that is their route to building new classrooms. A good guideline is to tell community members that a start date for the construction of the bottle school can not be set until at least two-thirds of the required bottles have been collected and stuffed with trash.
At times, especially near the end of the bottle collection when people are tired and the newness of the activity has worn off, it may be