About BTCV: Be The Change Volunteers is a development aid organization that builds, renovates and equips educational facilities for deserving communities around the world. Our mission is to Empower Communities Through Education Locally. Our philosophy is that education is a human right. This is accomplished by teams of lay people who give their own time and money as volunteers. BTCV volunteers raise funds and travel on short term trips to work on these projects with the local community. BTCV is unaffiliated, but partners with governments, churches, mission organizations and other NGOs to accomplish our work.
BTCV was formed in July 2007 during a school rebuilding project in Rwanda when volunteers from around the world traveled to Butare to restore a primary school that had been all-but-destroyed. The Ecole Primaire Catholic de Butare was devastated emotionally and physically by the genocide of 1994. All of the classrooms in each of the school buildings on the small campus had bullet holes in the walls, broken windows, damaged or missing doors, and leaking roofs. Teachers and students were without a functional setting for learning, not to mention a lack of desks, supplies and resources to provide an education for the beautiful young minds that will shape Rwanda’s future. Many of the children attending the school are orphaned as a result of the genocide and live on or near school grounds with classmates and faculty. This is now the only “family” they know. It was hard for the BTCV founding members to believe that this had been the state of education in Butare for over a decade. Amazingly the students spirits were strong and their thirst for learning was intense! The founders and their friends assembled a volunteer team to raise funds for a restoration project that would Be The Change this community needed. The volunteers spent two weeks working at the school. They learned much while interacting with students, faculty, community members and hired skilled workers from the area. Six classrooms were fully restored and completely outfitted with desks and supplies.
Lives were changed… theirs and ours.
BTCV was formed in July 2007 during a school rebuilding project in Rwanda when volunteers from around the world traveled to Butare to restore a primary school that had been all-but-destroyed. The Ecole Primaire Catholic de Butare was devastated emotionally and physically by the genocide of 1994. All of the classrooms in each of the school buildings on the small campus had bullet holes in the walls, broken windows, damaged or missing doors, and leaking roofs. Teachers and students were without a functional setting for learning, not to mention a lack of desks, supplies and resources to provide an education for the beautiful young minds that will shape Rwanda’s future. Many of the children attending the school are orphaned as a result of the genocide and live on or near school grounds with classmates and faculty. This is now the only “family” they know. It was hard for the BTCV founding members to believe that this had been the state of education in Butare for over a decade. Amazingly the students spirits were strong and their thirst for learning was intense! The founders and their friends assembled a volunteer team to raise funds for a restoration project that would Be The Change this community needed. The volunteers spent two weeks working at the school. They learned much while interacting with students, faculty, community members and hired skilled workers from the area. Six classrooms were fully restored and completely outfitted with desks and supplies.
Lives were changed… theirs and ours.
The Rwanda Project ignited a passion in four people who would become BTCV's founding members - Brian Anderson, Dominique Anderson, Cristi Cook and Jimi Cook (pictured here). Building schools became a mission for them and the official inaugural BTCV project was completed in October 2008 on Tonle Sap Lake in Siem Reap, Cambodia. BTCV built The Floating Learning Center - a school on a boat - which serves a floating community of 160 families with no consistently accessible educational facilities prior to the BTCV project.
Be The Change Volunteers (BTCV) officially received its status as a charitable organization in 2008 exclusively for charitable and educational purposes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code.
Be The Change Volunteers (BTCV) officially received its status as a charitable organization in 2008 exclusively for charitable and educational purposes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code.
