HEA Phase 1 Cohort: Libraries Without Borders — Ideas Box
Learn more about the grantees from our first HEA cohort, including some of their learnings on the journey to scale.
What is the innovation?:
Libraries Without Borders works with partner NGOs and humanitarian actors, who run community centres, child-friendly spaces or operate in refugee camps and emergency settings, mediating activities and installing a fully-equipped autonomous, mobile multimedia library (the Ideas Box) to provide tools for:
• Learning — through a wide range of physical and digital educational content that is available offline via a local server, books and e-readers;
• Playing — through games and a cinema;
• Connecting — through the provision of a wide range of digital resources (hosted online and offline), 30 computers and tablets; and
• Creating — through cameras, arts and crafts, puppets, a stage and sound system.
What is the education focus?:
Children and youth.
Scale:
Since the Ideas Box was first deployed in 2014, the project has reached a total of 110,000 unique visitors across all locations; 61% of those users have been refugees.
Programme adaptations to support scaling:
HEA Evaluation:
Process and impact evaluations were carried out for the programme. The process evaluation investigated differences in implementation and partnership models of two Ideas Boxes in Amman, Jordan, as well as the potential scalability and long term sustainability of the programme in Jordan and elsewhere. The impact evaluations investigated the psychosocial and educational impacts on children of each of the two Ideas Boxes in Amman.
Key learnings:
- Agility and codification: as an innovation is scaling, the way it is implemented in the field, as well as the way the innovation is integrated within the organisation will also change. Agility is key for the success of the innovation, while codification is also essential to build the sustainability of the project.
- Building and sustaining partnerships: As a growing organisation Libraries Without Borders have learned that it is crucial to ensure that all teams, from HQ level through to field operations and implementing partners, have the necessary ‘tools’ (ie. documentation, definitions of positions and tasks etc) to build and sustain quality partnerships throughout all projects and across geographic locations.
- Core value: the scaling process has enabled Libraries without Borders to identify its core value proposition. For the Ideas Box programme, while the Ideas Box as a tool is very valuable, the services embedded in the project — content curation, capacity building, mediation — also contribute to building social impact.
