The Shelter Box is a multi-functional design solution created to help homeless people with their everyday needs.

Realized in special humidity-resistant cardboard, its structure can be transformed in many objects: a chair, a table, a bed and a bag.

Every single function is specially designed to ease the main issues homeless people face living on the street: joint pain, cold, respiratory diseases and carrying belongings.

The Shelter Box is cheap and easily reproducible, in order to be prepared in large quantities whenever it’s necessary.

In order to raise public awareness and increase the number of donations, we launched an online video asking anyone to discover our project during the Milan Design Week, which is the most important Furniture Fair in the world.

There, we showcased the Shelter Box in the most important and popular districts, Brera and Tortona, gathering the attention of donors, the media and professionals.

After one week, MIA experienced a 513% increase in donors’ visits on the website.

Thanks to different showcases during the biggest Furniture Fair in the World, the Milan Design Week 2017, MIA reached 340,000 visitors.

For MIA Onlus, The Shelter Box has been the most successful campaign ever, with over one million media impression in one week only.

The Shelter Box isn’t just a design-for-good solution to a huge problem. It’s a new media. An interesting object able to engage lots of people and lots of target audiences, from the one who will use it to the one who will fund it.

It’s what advertising is gradually become: an integrated idea with a social impact, capable of making a full city and a full country talk about an invisible problem that is getting out of control.

MIA Onlus is one of the most important organization dedicated to helping homeless people in Milan.

In order to raise public awareness and increase the number of donations, we launched an online video asking anyone to discover our project during the Milan Design Week, which is the most important Furniture Fair in the world.

There, we showcased the Shelter Box in the most important and popular districts, Brera and Tortona, gathering the attention of donors, the media and professionals.

In Italy, over 50,000 people are homeless. 20,000 of them can’t find a place inside sheltered housing and they’re forced to live on the street.

A huge problem that many Non-Profit Organizations are trying to soften, providing every kind of help, like food and hot beverages.

MIA Onlus, an organization based in Milan, which is the Italian city with the highest amount of homeless people, wanted to create something special, that could raise public awareness of the issue and increase the number of donations, without any kind of media investment.