Pakistan's Billboard-Beds Are Making Life Easier For The Homeless

As the sun sets and people begin to drift home, wistfully dreaming of their beds, there’s a simultaneous yearning for thousands of others who begin to worry about which cold, hard street corner they can lay their head on for the night. Homelessness is a problem that affects most major metropolitan cities, and India is no exception with the 2011 census putting the total number of homeless at 1.77 million. Across the border the situation is not much better. Pakistan is full of migrant workers who, while searching for a better life, have stumbled into a waking nightmare.

Most of the people who line the streets at night have gruelling jobs in manual labour, at the end of their days when they need a comfortable bed to recuperate for the next day they instead must sleep on the cold, hard concrete. This is what Pakistani mattress company, Master Moltyfoam clearly kept in mind when they launched their new billboard campaign. With the help of advertising agency BBDO Pakistan, they released a video that has quickly gone viral on social media.

The idea is one that is simple but effective. During the day, the Moltyfoam billboards will advertise the company but at night they turn into comfortable and convenient beds. As of 2015, there were 150 of these aptly named ‘billbeds’ installed across 9 Pakistani cities and hopefully many more will follow both in Pakistan and across the world. Although it doesn’t solve the homelessness problem, it does ensure that every night, at least 150 people will be able to get a good night’s rest.

Check out the heartrending video that started it all here.