Festival-goers travelling to Glastonbury this week for four days of rain-soaked hedonism are being invited to leave their tents behind when the music ends so that they can be reused in impoverished countries and disaster zones.

The Give Me Shelter project hopes that more than 1,000 people at the festival will drop off their camping equipment at a dedicated stall so that the tents can be sent to countries such as Botswana and Sri Lanka.

Volunteers plan to take the tents to prisons, where inmates who are allowed to take part in community work will ensure that the equipment is good enough to send overseas.

Prison authorities who expressed interest in the scheme will ensure that any drugs left behind by festival-goers will not make it into the hands of prisoners. Ben Solanky, of Global Hand, the nonprofit organisation behind the idea, said that they were aware of festival-goers’ and inmates’ shared interest in illegal substances. “There is the possibility that the tents will have drugs in them, but [the prison authorities] could use sniffer dogs to check them beforehand,” he told The Times.

The project, which will also operate at music festivals in Reading and Leeds, began as a pilot scheme last year at the Reading and Leeds festivals. Mean Fiddler, which runs all three events, invited Global Hand to take any tents left behind that would otherwise be thrown away. Volunteers gathered 450 tents, but 150 were then stolen. The remaining 300 were sent to three projects run by separate aid organisations.

One project was the Bana Ba Keletso daycare centre in Molepolole, Botswana, which provides help for 400 children whose parents have died from Aids-related infections. The tents will be used for trips away from the city.

Tents were also sent to a centre for street children in Kandy, Sri Lanka, and to Ukraine, where they were used for summer camps for orphans. Vanya, a nine-year-old orphan from Ukraine who used a former festival tent while on a summer trip, said that she was grateful to the donors. “I thank you that you presented me so wonderful a time in the camp. I saw the sea for the first time in my life. I will never forget this.”

No tents have yet been sent to disaster zones, but Mr Solanky said that he has had interest from one project that was preparing for emergency situations.

He said that tents needed to be without graffiti or excessive soiling. “It is not respectful to send a tent with graffiti out to a warzone, for instance,” he said.

The idea has been endorsed by the singer KT Tunstall, who will be performing at Glastonbury. “Festivals have always epitomised openness, tolerance and community,” she said. “It’s great that Give Me Shelter can channel some of this vibe.”

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