Shellbook allows you to communicate crucial information across cultural, language and technology barriers. Most importantly, the Shellbook process involves communities themselves in the localization of information. Local involvement leads to acceptance, ownership and action at levels rarely achieved by outsiders.

Materials developed for maximum reach (Internationalized and then Regionalized) are provided as resources to local communities where they are adapted by members of the target audience (Localized). The result is material which shares a common core message, yet looks and reads very differently from one community to the next.

Shellbooks are revolutionizing communication within local communities, and they are creating new opportunities in healthcare, literacy and education, international development, and global business.

Since 1989 the Shellbook localization process has been used by more than 1,000 language communities worldwide to bring understanding to the people most at risk of being left behind by today's increasingly global society.

By providing information in a ‘resource’ format within the proven Shellbook system, quality assured materials can be very quickly localized within any number of target communities. The structure of the ‘shell’ creates a framework to manage and assure the accuracy of information through every version.

A Shellbook gives a community the tools it needs to express a set of ideas in their own way, and it creates a sense of involvement and message ownership that simple translation can never achieve. A single Shellbook takes on many different forms when localized by different communities; a classroom, an immigrant population, club, village, neighborhood or even a single student.

Localized Shellbooks carry a consistent message in the form most appropriate for the local audience.