VISIONS high school volunteers have been visiting Tortola since 1992 and so the island communities expect our arrival with the coming of summer. You’ll be greeted warmly when you first arrive and will feel at home in no time the minute you see Carol’s smile (Carol is our long-time cook and home base mother). As much as we look forward to seeing our island friends again, they, too, look forward to meeting VISIONS students. We hope you will see yourself as an ambassador to friends in the BVI with whom we have forged long-standing friendships.

Your home on Tortola will be a community center or school in which you and your summer leaders (staffers) live together. There are gender-separate rooms and privacy spaces for guys and gals. VISIONS provides burly air mattresses; you bring a pillow, twin sheets, and a light-weight blanket. You’ll have a cubby for your personal items and access to bathrooms and showers. Keep in mind that fresh water is precious in the Caribbean. If the season has been an especially dry one, showers will be short and may not necessarily be taken every day. We do laundry once a week in Road Town.

There are small cafes and little stores in nearby Road Town and our neighborhood that will tempt you with their smoothies and other island snacks. We’re surrounded by community friends, and kids stop by frequently to visit.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head to your chosen community service project with your work team and a staffer or two. We typically work five or six hours, with short breaks and at least one hour for lunch. A rotating group of three or four students and one staffer stays back from projects each day for "home base" crew. The crew tidies up and cleans our living space, collects the mail, goes to market for the day’s fresh-food shopping, prepares lunch, and helps Carol, our cook, with dinner preparations and clean-up afterwards. Home base crew might join another work crew later in the day.

After work we make time for internships with local artisans, jaunts to the beach to swim and snorkel, short hikes, making coconut bread and Johnny cakes, showering or just relaxing before dinner. Several evenings each week after dinner, we set aside time to meet as a group of volunteers. This is a slow-down time to speak and listen to each other, share our reactions to the day or iron out occasional issues together. You’ll have the opportunity to call home once a week.

You’ll have constant opportunities to explore and learn about island culture and to mix and mingle with community folks, many of whom often come by for dinner. You will get to know most pockets of the island, meeting artists and crafts people, learning to fish, helping harvest fruit at a local farm. You will stroll lively Road Town (the BVI’s commercial and government center) and watch outdoor steel drum performances. There will be basketball games with local youth, barbecues on the beach, moonlight music and more.

Weekends are all about adventure and exploration, including a ferry ride to neighboring Virgin Gorda to spend the day at the world famous Baths and watch the Mokko Jumbies (stilt walkers) perform; a sailing trip to outer islands to dive in caves and pools and snorkel in live coral beds; and a scuba resort course, if you choose. We will swim at Brewer’s Bay and Smugglers Cove, and hike up Sage Mountain from where, if the day is clear, you can see almost the entire length of the Virgin Islands archipelago.