A Piece of Cardboard Is Helping Transform India’s Schools

This article originally appeared on Lost at E Minor.

A single sheet of cardboard can’t do much, right? Wrong! In India, many children go to school but don’t have the luxury of sitting behind a desk. To address this issue, the nonprofit organization Aarambh created a necessity out of a single sheet of cardboard: a school desk. The Bombay-based nonprofit worked with designers to come up with the desk design from a simple sheet of cardboard.
They transformed that cardboard into a modern-looking backpack for kids to carry all their school supplies, but when folded out, the briefcase then turns into a work desk.

What’s brilliant about this eco-friendly design is that it costs just 20 cents to produce and each desk is cut in a way so all the student needs to do is fold it together—nothing more is required. This makes education and school supplies even more accessible for families everywhere.