These colorful boxes provide disconnected communities with books, e-readers and tablets

Ideas Box is a new scheme that aims to help communities disrupted by war and crises continue to learn with mobile boxes containing educational, creative and cultural resources.

The luxuries enjoyed in the West are often taken for granted, but there are areas of the world where children can’t even gain access to a basic education. In the past, we’ve seen the Mobile Movies project bring cinema experiences to those who’ve never seen a film before, and now Ideas Box is a new scheme that aims to help communities disrupted by war and crises continue to learn with mobile boxes containing educational, creative and cultural resources.

Designed by Philippe Starck and initiated by nonprofit Libraries Without Borders, the core of the scheme is a set of four portable, colorful boxes that can be folded out to form different stations. The orange box contains 250 books, 50 e-readers and 5,000 e-books, as well as access to offline MOOC content from the Khan Academy, Open Street Map and TED. The yellow box includes 15 tablets, four laptops and satellite/3G internet links to connect even rural communities to the web. The blue box features a cinema module with a built-in TV and projection screen, with access to 100 films. Finally, the green box offers tools for coding lessons and arts & crafts, including laptops and HD cameras. Each module is robust and portable, and can be deployed on the ground anywhere, even in emergency situations. Ideas Box aims to give disrupted and disconnected communities to tools to build or regain an educational infrastructure and enrich their cultural lives.

Watch the video below to find out more about the project:

Ideas Box is currently active in Burundi, Rwanda and regions surrounding Syria such as Syria Jordan and Lebanon, but hopes to expand to Darfur, Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo among other locations. Are there other ways to deliver modern technologies to communities that typically don’t have access?