How we started building bottle schools

From Bottle School Wiki

This manual is presented by Hug It Forward, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We have been empowering communities to build bottle schools since 2009.

The idea of building with bottles was pioneered by Pura Vida Atitlan, a Guatemalan organization. Hug It Forward was introduced to Laura Kutner, a Peace Corps Volunteer, by a “chance” phone call in August 2009. Laura told us that the community of Granados, a small mountain town north of Guatemala City, was trying to build a school from plastic bottles, but they had run out of cash. Five Hug It Forward volunteers traveled to Granados with the funds and spent a month helping to complete the bottle school.

It was a truly inspirational experience for us all to see the whole community come together as one to build the school: kids as young as five collecting bottles from the streets, the side of the mountain and riverbanks; mothers motivating the kids and stuffing the bottles with trash; fathers volunteering their labor at the construction site, having already worked long days in the fields.

After we completed the first bottle school, we were inspired to create a system for more of these beautifully impactful schools to be built. We made it our goal to empower more communities to build their own bottle schools. Working with more talented and hardworking Peace Corps Volunteers, five more bottle schools were completed in 2010.