Project BLOOMBOX for girls' education!
Donation protected
Hi! I'm Sofie Roux, a high school student from Vancouver, Canada and Founder of Sparkly and SmART; a social enterprise, (www.sparklyandsmart.com). My dream is to support and enhance girls' access to education. For the past 11 years, I have explored potential solutions that help reduce fundamental barriers to girls receiving a quality education; including lack of access to clean water, lack of access to proper menstrual hygiene management, and lack of access to technology in the classroom.
Through sales of my art, I have previously raised $50,000 to fund and set up a computer lab and and a sanitary pad-making machine in a busy Township of Cape Town, South Africa, and to establish three borehole water wells in rural Malawi.
With a strong, personal interest in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), I am very excited to dive into the most ambitious project I have taken on to date! I have designed and begun building a BloomBox, a solar-powered off-grid learning lab!
The BloomBox lab will be a sustainable, bright, open-concept learning environment, centred in a repurposed shipping container. It will be designed as a free-standing, sustainable, off-grid space to enhance the infrastructure of a high school with no electricity or running water, to enable its students to access STEAM education, and to help their interests in these areas continue to bloom! The Lab will be fully powered by solar panels, and will contain 20 computer stations and accompanying technology, enabled with wireless access to amazing learning resources (even when off-line), to complement and enhance STEAM curricula, through a remote educational hotspot.
This BloomBox project is anticipated to cost CDN $100,000. To date, three quarters of the funds (CDN $70,000) for this project have already been raised, through sales of my Sparkly and SmART artwork! The idea is to complete fundraising, collect the materials for the Lab, build and test the technology in Vancouver, repackage all the materials and contents into the container (that will serve as the Lab’s physical structure), and ship it to Malawi, where it will then be re-assembled at the high school, in time for a July 2021 launch!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my dream of helping other girls realize theirs!
Through sales of my art, I have previously raised $50,000 to fund and set up a computer lab and and a sanitary pad-making machine in a busy Township of Cape Town, South Africa, and to establish three borehole water wells in rural Malawi.
With a strong, personal interest in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), I am very excited to dive into the most ambitious project I have taken on to date! I have designed and begun building a BloomBox, a solar-powered off-grid learning lab!
The BloomBox lab will be a sustainable, bright, open-concept learning environment, centred in a repurposed shipping container. It will be designed as a free-standing, sustainable, off-grid space to enhance the infrastructure of a high school with no electricity or running water, to enable its students to access STEAM education, and to help their interests in these areas continue to bloom! The Lab will be fully powered by solar panels, and will contain 20 computer stations and accompanying technology, enabled with wireless access to amazing learning resources (even when off-line), to complement and enhance STEAM curricula, through a remote educational hotspot.
This BloomBox project is anticipated to cost CDN $100,000. To date, three quarters of the funds (CDN $70,000) for this project have already been raised, through sales of my Sparkly and SmART artwork! The idea is to complete fundraising, collect the materials for the Lab, build and test the technology in Vancouver, repackage all the materials and contents into the container (that will serve as the Lab’s physical structure), and ship it to Malawi, where it will then be re-assembled at the high school, in time for a July 2021 launch!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my dream of helping other girls realize theirs!
Organizer and beneficiary
Sofie Roux
Organizer
Vancouver, BC
Sofie Roux
Beneficiary