Awards - Bibliothèques Sans Frontières

Main awards

In February 2020, Libraries Without Borders was awarded by the Franco-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry for its solution developed in partnership with the German training platform Kiron: SD cards integrating the digital training system, thus enabling more vulnerable to benefit from hundreds of hours of training, without consuming any data.

On September 23, 2019, Libraries Without Borders joins the MIT Solvers Community for its collaboration with Kiron, The Future is Offline. This program, accessible without internet connection thanks to SD card technology, aims to give refugees access to dozens of online courses from the top universities. The Future is Offline also won the Innovation for Refugee Inclusion Prize.

Libraries Without Borders is one of the twelve winners of the first edition of the Facebook Fund for Online Citizenship. Thanks to this award, Les Voyageurs du Numérique have been able to enrich their resources with modules on digital citizenship. Hackatons were also organized throughout France, led by the 500 citizens already trained in our workshops.

Share it, Station F’s Tech for Good acceleration program, led by Ashoka and entrepreneurs convinced that technology is a powerful vector for changing the world. This program allowed us to develop an offline internet solution allowing access to information in refugee camps and territories not connected to the internet.

Libraries Without Borders is one of four organizations to receive the 2017 Open Education Consortium’s Creativity and Innovation Award for Ideas Box! Ideas Box is completely in line with the OEC philosophy: openness, free of charges, open access educational resources, learner empowerment.

Ideas Box is one of six winning projects at the WISE Awards 2016. The WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) is a platform for promoting innovative educational approaches, with international renown. With the WISE Award, the Ideas Box’s ability to respond to educational challenges in a comprehensive and creative way is recognized.

On September 23, 2016, the United States Library of Congress presented its annual international literacy award to Libraries Without Borders. With this award, the world’s largest library recognizes LWB’s significant contribution to improving literacy around the world. The Library of Congress jury praises the work of BSF, which builds the capacity of vulnerable people through education, training, and easier access to books and reading.

The Clinton Global Initiative gathers global leaders across the world to create and set up innovative solutions to respond to mankind’s most pressing challenges. Libraries Without Borders was invited to present its initiatives before a gathering of political representatives, CEOs, and major philanthropists in September, 2016.

In 2015, Ashoka, the largest network of social entrepreneurs in the world, invested Jeremy Lachal as one of its members. LWB, through its General director, is as a result part of the Ashoka fellow network and is recognized as an innovative participant, with a hybrid model. Thanks to the support of this powerful network, LWB will be able to develop new projects around social entrepreneurship to build durable library models in developing countries, with for example, the program Ideas Box 4 entrepreneurs.

On March 10th, 2015, the Ideas Box was distinguished in the contest, “La France s’engage”, an initiative from the French government aiming to be a true “accelerator” for social projects. As a partner of this initiative, Libraries Without Borders has been able to work on reducing the manufacturing costs of the Ideas Box and expanding the initiative throughout France and the rest of the world.

In 2015, Libraries Without Borders was awarded the Google Impact Challenge France with the Ideas Box. The contest rewards bold projects that use digital technology to change the world. LWB thus benefits from 500,000 euros of financing, but also partnerships with the Social Factory and Googlers to prepare the deployment of new Ideas Box across the world.

In November 2015, LWB obtained the label IDEAS which confirms good governance, proper financial management, and effectiveness of our organization’s actions. The constant support of IDEAS volunteers allows LWB to professionalize its operations, to reinforce its transparence, and to better measure its efficiency.

In 2010, LWB was awarded the Grand Culture Prize of the Louis D. Foundation by the French Institute for its actions in Haiti in the category of post-earthquake reconstruction. The Grand Prize allowed LWB to work for 3 years in the country creating field libraries, supporting networks of public reading, and strengthening university libraries.