Bringing volunteers

From Bottle School Wiki

Bottle schools are a great opportunity for volunteers from other countries to participate in a community based project. It is important to remember that a bottle school is absolutely about the community’s efforts and about community leadership. International volunteers should not be seen as having any “special” talents or skills to contribute. Their labor contributions should be the same as those of your community’s unskilled labor volunteers.

It is a rare opportunity, therefore, for these international volunteers to be working side by side as equals with locals with a common goal in mind, truly as one people. It is exciting for children to be introduced to new cultures, languages and customs, and the cultural interchange goes further as both sides come to recognize their oneness.

Volunteers come away with a fresh understanding and glimpse of life in communities very different from their own. This an experience vastly different from one gained by being a "tourist" in the host country.

Beyond the exchange of cultures and the donated manual labor, many volunteers who visit bottle school communities want to bring something more, something tangible to leave behind. We encourage visitors to think of creative personal gifts that they can leave with the community as a sign of gratitude for their hospitality and shared brotherhood.

However, we have found in our experience that bringing huge bags of school supplies or donated clothing from “developed” countries is not as positive an exchange as a more personal gift. And easy way to think about this is to give of yourself, rather than giving a commodity.