It’s difficult traveling the globe with small children,  so why not get the world shipped to your kids? Akeelah Kuraishi, who founded Little Global Citizens with husband Tim Minnick, aims to do just that with subscription boxes that deliver a curriculum on multiculturalism to doorsteps each month. “We wanted to instill in our children an understanding that people around the world are just like you, and that the differences are cool, interesting and need to be understood,” Kuraishi says. The idea for Little Global Citizens stems back to a global journey Kuraishi and Minnick took seven years ago, when they quit their jobs in Chicago and visited 19 countries, intent on finding local culture. They visited Southern Asia, Africa, South America and even Cuba. The couple, now living in Bradenton, can’t imagine such a trip with their two- and three-year-old boys in tow, but do want the cultural exposure. Using years of marketing skills, Kuraishi and Minnick in May shipped the first boxes filled with materials for Thailand, including a craft kit to paint a wood elephant cutout and a toy tuk tuk, a sort of tricycle-rickshaw cross used for taxi service in Southeast Asia. Kids also found instructions on pao nag yang, a rubber band game, and information cards on Lotus flowers grown in Thailand. 

Kuraishi, herself a biracial child of a Pakistani mother and Scottish father, says she wants to source goods in the boxes whenever possible. The boxes will be aimed at kids ages 3 through 7, and will also come with a Montessori curriculum to teach children about the countries featured in each shipment. The entrepreneur couple’s oldest child attends Center Montesorri in Bradenton now, and the parents love the individualized pace of the schooling style. Demand proved to be high, with the company selling more than 50 percent of its anticipated first shipment within 48 hours of taking orders. And a business plan submitted to the Tampa Bay Wave accelerator program also impressed, and Little Global Citizens will be mentored into its next stages of growth, as Little Global Citizens seek to take over the world. For the moment, the packages will be geared toward home use, not classrooms, but Kuraishi says demand for the new product has been incredibly high and that could change, and the company already fields requests from as far away as Singapore and New Zealand. “This biggest part of this to us is that children understand and develop a love for other cultures and the people within them,” Kuraishi says.