Bangladesh

The district of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh has seen the arrival of almost 700,000 Rohingya refugees in 2017, a Muslim minority historically the victims of discriminatiion in neighboring Myanmar. Most of these refugees are concentrated in the Kutupalong camp, with wooden and bamboo houses, where literacy rates are under 40%. In 2019, LWB installed six Ideas Box kits and Ideas Cube servers in the Rohingya refugee camps and in the host communities around them to allow access to information and education. Several activity workshops were put into place for Rohingya children and teens, including making an interactive map of the camp’s services and a collection of histories and traditional stories of the Rohingya. These libraries, both physical and digital, give refugees and local populations the possibility to be informed every day, play, learn new skills, and express themselves individually and collectively.