Young Social Impact Heroes: Why and How Sofie Roux Of BloomBox Design Labs Is Helping To Change Our World

An Interview With Rachel Kline

A clear recognition that girls face structural barriers to STEAM education, and therefore to fulfilling their own potential and the potential of their families, communities, and generations to come. This recognition would make comprehensive action a priority.

As a part of my series about young people who are making an important social impact”,I had the pleasure of interviewing Sofie Roux.

Sofie Roux is the visionary Gen Z Founder & CEO of BloomBox Design Labs, transforming education through innovation. Sofie’s journey began long before her current sophomore status at Stanford University, where she studies civil engineering and architecture. It all started with “Sparkly and Smart,” an art enterprise that remarkably raised $300,000 to support girls’ education. Today, through her revolutionary BloomBoxes ingeniously crafted from repurposed shipping containers, she’s reshaping education in Malawi by crafting vibrant STEAM learning environments. Sofie’s accomplishments, underscored by her impressive achievements, reflect her unwavering commitment to women’s education. Her impactful work has earned her recognition and coveted speaking engagements at TEDx events, where she shares her inspiring story. Sofie’s mission is to make high-quality education accessible through powerful design. A true Gen Z leader, she advocates for change and is a beacon of hope.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

Yes! Thank you for this incredible honor. I’m from Vancouver, Canada, a city at the intersection of ocean, rainforests, and mountains, and brimming with art and architecture. It’s a place that gave me my love of running through the rain and doing my best at school. I went to elementary and high school in all girls’ schools, so I grew up surrounded by strong, smart, funny girls who excelled at the math whiteboard, on the field, and in the studio. I was lucky to never see limits to girl power. I live here with my parents and grandma, who also double as my closest friends and collaborators. With them, I have gotten to travel the world. My favorite place to go since I’ve been really little is Cape Town, South Africa — another colorful city on the edge of the ocean that inspires me every day.

Since I’ve always loved both art and science, I decided really early that I would be an architect. I’ve been making art and building contraptions at the kitchen table for as long as I can remember, and I always hoped I’d get to be an architect building amazing schools where they are needed most. I go to Stanford University now (a place I’ve dreamed about since watching Gabriella Montez in “High School Musical 3” as a 6-year-old!), where I study architecture and design for sustainable development.

You are currently leading an organization that aims to make a social impact. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change in our world today?

129 million girls around the world are not in school. This means the world is missing out on all their brilliant potential and ideas. We need their creativity to address the complex challenges of our world today. Promoting gender equality in education stands as a paramount objective in global development. According to the World Bank, the lack of educational opportunities for girls translates into a staggering economic loss ranging from $15 trillion to $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings for nations. Addressing this is a complex challenge, with many ways to get involved. Over the course of more than a decade, my focus has been on creating access to inspiring educational environments for students excluded from that opportunity. I got to work designing a potential solution to get more girls into creative makerspaces. My social enterprise, BloomBox Design Labs, has successfully implemented modular, solar-powered computer labs in both urban and rural educational settings, including a refugee camp that previously had minimal access to electricity.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

When I was in the first grade, some of my friends and I raised money through sales of crafts we made to take to South Africa, where I was going on a family trip. We hoped to invest it in education. It was there that I met Rosie Mashale, the Director of Baphumelele Children’s Home, a safe refuge and home in Cape Town. I felt drawn to the kids — many my age and younger — and to Rosie’s work, and I was so keen to help. Among the buildings in the brightly painted, beautiful Baphumelele complex, Rosie had MANY projects on the go, but the one that captured my imagination was her idea to build a computer lab for the kids. I must have just wanted them to have the same kind of lab that I had at my school, but I see now that Rosie was already thinking about potential set free, seeds in full bloom.

Rosie took me under her wing, and she remains my mentor to this day, 10 years later. She is an actual CNN Hero now for the extraordinary work she has done to address vulnerability in one of the world’s most vulnerable communities, but somehow, she found time to listen to my dreams. From the time of our first meeting, she always made me feel that my ideas and actions were important enough to nurture and cultivate.

Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions but never manifest it. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?

Thank you for this amazing question. It makes me realize that along the journey so far, there may not have been a single “a-ha” moment, but rather, there were many, each followed by a new set of unexpected and interesting challenges, which in turn introduced me to amazing new people and ideas. I started with the maybe naïve hope that a kid could make a useful contribution to a complex challenge. The surprising thing is, that no one I turned to for guidance or help discouraged me. People just seemed to roll up their sleeves to get to work.

As we worked, the dimensions of the challenges became clearer, and the potential solutions became better defined. We started with a broad goal of increasing access to education, and we contributed to and learned from efforts that prioritized clean water as a key determinant of health and educational access. We worked on small-scale solutions that recognized that lack of access to menstrual health can disrupt girls’ educational access. In these early steps, we learned how communities work together to create sustainable solutions. When I fully realized that my interests were in adapting architecture and design approaches to educational access (after a pre-collegiate summer program called Architecture and the City), it was both an “a-ha” moment and a natural progression! I grew up and evolved alongside these ideas. Design thinking is an approach to complex problems that emphasizes empathy, careful definition of problems, iterative ideation, prototyping and testing. I didn’t know about design thinking until recently, but we have cycled through all of these steps, with many joyful “a-ha” moments along the way.

Many young people don’t know the steps to take to start a new organization. But you did. What are some of the things or steps you took to start your project?

There are probably many great ways to start an organization. Mine was kind of organic. I needed a platform to sell my artwork to raise money for the educational initiatives I was working on. So we started an entity, Sparkly and Smart, with a website to promote art sales. When our BloomBox STEAM labs started to gain momentum, and when we filed for patents for the retractable roof design, I knew it was time to create a more formal social enterprise. I Iearned everything I could about the different corporate structures available to us, and what responsibilities came with each before committing to one. It is kind of daunting, but also fun to develop a clear vision and formal plan for a brand new organization based on our values and everything we learned along the way.

When I drew the initial sketch for the BloomBox, I had no idea where to start with building it, or shipping it across the world. I didn’t know much about classroom design, education curricula, or the structure of shipping containers. But I did know how to ask a lot of questions, and luckily for me, I was surrounded with mentors excited to help. After raising enough money for a container, and attending my first architecture internship, I had a 20-foot shipping container craned into our family’s backyard. From there, there were late nights on call with solar electricians, staying after school to ask my physics teachers questions, rushing home to work on the construction of the box, and making as much art as possible to keep raising funds. The project occupied all my thoughts and filled me with wonder. It still does.

Can you share the most exciting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?

In the midst of the construction of BloomBox 1.0 at a high school in Blantyre, Malawi, drills spinning and a grinder throwing sparks across the foundation, I was handed a Zoom call and asked to explain the concept of the BloomBox to members of the Malawi Ministry of Education. Their questions were detailed and technical, and I did my best to understand where they were leading me, to learn how to think and take action to support their vision of the future of the public school system. When I couldn’t quite seem to convey my excitement about the Lab in words, I took the phone up a ladder to the roof of the BloomBox and showed everyone a sweeping view of the 18 solar panels moving into position, and the way we had integrated the BloomBox into the existing education infrastructure and surrounding community. It was a breathtaking moment. It was that day, and after a successful follow-up pitch from home to them about scaling the idea, that I realized the potential of the BloomBox to complement other large-scale efforts to help eliminate structural barriers to high-quality education.

A close second to this is the moment, an hour after sunset, on the last day of the installation of the first BloomBox. We flipped a switch and illuminated the Lab for the first time. Light from 12 spotlights spilled from the ceiling of the BloomBox to the edge of the basketball court where it stood. A night pick-up game started, maybe for the first time ever.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When we started construction of the first box, I was working on the framing, and I kept stripping the screws. Luckily, I had Jan — a friend, mentor, and amazingly talented carpenter. On the surface, he is tough and stoic. Every time the screws got stripped, I would look up at him in horror. Without judgment or even a change in expression, he would hand me the next screw. I was truly terrible at lining the screwdriver up, but he wouldn’t let me give up, even when we were working in the cold and rain. I kept practicing until I could finish a single frame. I was so slow, but I got faster because of Jan’s gentle insistence to keep going. That’s how many things happened with the BloomBox — with persistence. The first BloomBox was transported during a global shipping crisis. The container, laden with solar panels — batteries, and technology — was literally dropped in the middle of a highway when a crane snapped. We had customs delays beyond our control… disaster after disaster, our team took challenges in stride (and often with a sense of humor), we got unexpected help from amazingly resourceful people, and we worked towards a beautiful outcome. After a while, we even began to see “mistakes” as a sign of progress, and puzzles to solve.

We can only be successful with some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?

My mom has been my lifelong role model and cheerleader. She’s been by my side at every craft fair, and every step of BloomBox development. Everything I know about leadership, I learned from her.

I’ve also been so lucky to learn that sometimes phenomenal people come out of the blue and change the way you see the world and your perception of what’s possible. Peter Kauya, the head of the first school in Malawi where we installed a BloomBox, who liked the idea of a solar powered STEAM lab, let it go forward, fought for it, and showed up every day on the job site, sometimes even to scrub solar panels, sweep the floors, and solve unexpected logistical problems.

On a windy winter night, an hour after sunset, this past July, Peter and his wife Frieda were there after long days of work. We flipped the switch, and the lights of the BloomBox filled the night sky for the first time. He’s always there.

Warren Lloyd, an architect in SLC, took on a high school intern for two summers in a row, for no reason. He’s shown me that beautiful design changes how we interact with the world. He inspired my interest in environmental sustainability. I hope to be an architect like him one day — with sensitivity, vision, and phenomenal skill. And Jan, who built our house, and then he taught me how to build a BloomBox. He flew all the way to Malawi for me, twice.

Kurt Dahlin, founder of WWFA, didn’t really want me to come to Malawi for the first Water Wells trip — but that was before he knew me! Kurt showed me how to earn trust, build respectful partnerships, and fight for what is important. WWFA has built and successfully maintained hundreds of sparkling water wells across Malawi, with idealism, practicality, and consistent hard work. There are so many more people I have been blessed to know — Josh at the solar power company that gave us 18 panels at cost, taught us how to install them, and took our calls day and night from Vancouver and Blantyre, crane operators who waived the charges to hoist the BB over our garage, the shipping company that figured out how to move the lab across oceans and continents at the height of the pandemic, a family friend who unexpectedly came to our door with a beautiful steel ramp to make the BB wheelchair accessible, and more who helped in more ways than we could have ever imagined.

Can you tell us a story about an individual impacted or helped by your cause?

On the first day on site for the build of BloomBox 1.0, the team grew to include Daniel Kachingwe, a 23-year-old from a neighboring village who was just passing by when the container arrived at the school on a flatbed truck. He just volunteered to help unload, but he had an openness to learn and could pick up any skill as the BloomBox came to life. For the two-week installation, he was often the first to arrive on site and last to leave. Over the few weeks we were there, he became my partner in crime, and remains one of my best friends to this day. He has helped with subsequent BloomBox installations, and has graduated from a solar installation training program. With his experience, he got hired by the solar company that installed the solar system for the second lab, BloomBox 2.0, and currently works in Lilongwe as a solar technician. There are thousands of students using the BloomBoxes to explore the world, most of whom are using computers for the first time. It has been the privilege of my life to learn their stories. It is also hugely fulfilling that the build process itself helps create technical capacity through gifted and driven people like my friend Danny.

Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?

I think three things educators, communities, and government policy can align on are:

• A clear recognition that girls face structural barriers to STEAM education, and therefore to fulfilling their own potential and the potential of their families, communities, and generations to come. This recognition would make comprehensive action a priority.
• Getting girls’ participation in secondary education to 100%. This is a target that would organize efforts to identify and address structural and social barriers.
• For girls in school, creating and measuring engagement and opportunity in STEAM fields. This is an exciting area because innovations in education technology and education architecture that create inviting and collaborative spaces can actually change the traditional constraints that have kept girls from pursuing their interests in science and technology beyond the post-secondary level.

The first and most important step is to recognize the talents and ideas of our girls. It is our leaders’ responsibility to support and champion young women’s ideas in every way possible. The next important step is to work to make it possible for their dreams to be fulfilled. It is our greatest hope for a bright future. I would urge policymakers to pour energy into thinking about equitable education, and how inspiring spaces can contribute to the solution. If we can remove barriers between girls and school, and then ensure that the education girls have access to is of the highest possible quality, we have a shot at closing the gender gap and unleashing limitless and much-needed creativity.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society like you, what would you tell them?

It is so exciting and reassuring to me that every young person is on their own phenomenal expeditions. I know that each journey is often difficult, and sometimes lonely, and that there are both breathtaking successes and spectacular failures along the way — failures that pave the way to success, to solving the wicked problems we care about. This is all part of a design thinking life — an expedition without a map, without knowing the destination, and with the confidence that you will end up somewhere great. Expeditions start with a single step. Embrace your own ideals and pursue them bravely. They are your greatness, and your great gift to the world. You got this! The world actually needs you! You will see this when you start to get involved with the things you are passionate about.

Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.

I’d love to have lunch with Javier Senosiain. He’s an architect I’ve looked up to throughout my entire design education. Ever since I came across a picture of his work in a magazine, I’ve been building Pinterest inspiration boards with his other projects and details from my favorite of his designs. He is a Mexican architect who pioneered the field of bio-architecture. His structures play with light and form and flow, and are all built with a reverence for nature and a childhood sense of wonder and curiosity. If I’m really lucky, we could eat lunch in his extraordinary Nautilus house in Mexico City, and he could explain how he designed a home with an absence of corners, and also an absence of limits.

How can our readers follow you online?

Please follow my Instagram!! @sofie.roux. I have so much fun with this account. Also, I post updates about BloomBox work on @sparkly.and.smart, my Instagram for my social enterprise. Please check out our newly launched website www.bloomboxdesignlabs.com. If you’re interested in purchasing art in the support of BloomBox development, I just built an Etsy site. Thank you so much for your time!

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your great work!