Skilled & Unskilled Labor

From Bottle School Wiki

Skilled Labor

The project facilitators and community leaders will need to contract a local foreman to build the school. The foreman should have experience with concrete/rebar construction, and the community should trust him and his skills. When building a bottle school there is a need to think a little outside the “block” of traditional construction, so your foreman needs to be open to the new construction method and ideally be a creative thinker.

We have found it is best to negotiate expectations and the price of the skilled labor with one foreman and allow him to then decide how many other masons he needs to contract in order to complete the build in a timely and safe fashion.

Encouraging participation

While it is necessary to hire skilled labor to ensure the sound construction of the project, the unskilled labor component provided by the community members is the true heart of the project.

In addition to collecting thousands of plastic bottles and thousands of pounds of inorganic trash, the community is integrally linked to the bottle school through their labor contributions.

The men, women and children of the community aid in mixing cement, prepping rebar, carrying supplies, placing bottles in the walls, etc. and in the process learn general construction skills as well as eco-brick construction techniques that they can use in the future.

All community members have to make certain sacrifices to donate their labor toward the project. That invested time and “sweat equity” will reinforce the overall ownership of project.