Kinkajou Portable Library and Projector

One in five adults worldwide do not know how to read. In other areas, for example rural regions of West Africa, up to 75% of the adult population is illiterate. According to the World Education Organization, it’s the lack of resources – specifically access to books and lighting – rather than the lack of interest in education that contributes to these numbers.

Even with books, adult literacy students face another hurdle: as most students must work during the day, they take classes at night, reading by lanterns and flashlights in villages without electricity. It is therefore difficult, particularly as an adult, to take the time to learn how to read.

Kinkajou is a portable library and projector using a five-watt, white LED and an array of seven plastic lenses to project an image or a page of text from microfilm. Optimized for night-time use in a classroom without electricity, the Kinkajou can project an image up to three meters across onto practically any flat surface.

Kinkajou takes the form of a microfilm projector. Combining microfilm technology with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Design that Matters has found the perfect combination and application for what was once considered an obsolete technology. Solar panels power the system. The LEDs last 10,000 hours. Low-cost plastic optics, adapted from toys, facilitates night-time projection. Microfilm is an extremely durable medium, rated to last up to 100 years, in a range of extreme conditions. And the technology is cheap: 10,000 pages can fit on a single spool of microfilm for $25; copies can be made off the master for $12 a piece–easily accomodating World Education’s entire adult curriculum, with room left for an entire reference library. Plus, teachers finally are free to face their students and teach them.

The design is optimized for its intended market of rural communities in developing countries, with simple user cues and a rugged, dust-proof housing, and includes a battery, charge controller and solar panel for off-grid use. The design requires no tools more complicated than pocket change for maintenance.