Hope for Haiti is a Haitian-based, non-profit with the goal to improve the quality of life for Haitian people through education, medical, clean water initiatives, and economic development programs. After a visceral experience with a number of VR projects at VR World in New York City, Sarah Porter, who the Director of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at Hope for Haiti, set out on a journey to explore how to use immersive technologies for outreach, education, and fundraising. She collaborated with Max Noir from China-based FXG Studios to create a Unity-based Hope for Haiti VR world (available on SideQuest) featuring a classroom (with interactive chalk), clean water punk, some informational videos, waterfall, beach, and campfire that serves as a social VR platform to hold events and guided tours through some of the projects, people, and stories of people working for their non-profit. They also have a NFT gallery featuring a number of artists who donated art to be sold to raise money for their non-profit.
Porter was a speaker with Noir at AWE in a session titled Virtual Reality for Social Impact in Haiti, and also had a spot on the AWE Expo floor playground showing off their experience to get feedback and support from the broader XR community. They held an initial event on October 20th, and have more plans to expand their virtual Haiti work and have more outreach, education, and fundraising events. I had a chance to catch up with Porter at the end of the Augmented World Expo to recap her experiences on the expo floor as well as the feedback she was receiving about their project from the broader XR community.
The Hope for Haiti experience is now available on SideQuest.
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Music: Fatality
