Humanity360 provides a platform to bring cultural anthropology and global social awareness into high school classrooms using virtual reality experiences. It is designed to foster compassion, dialogue and action and counteract xenophobic attitudes and beliefs as well as provide youths with a greater vocabulary to discuss real world issues and experience aspects of shared humanity.
Lack of travel and intercultural exchanges lead to xenophobic and ethnocentric beliefs that create issues in 21st century America. There is a real need for education that provides youths with the vocabulary and coping skills to process and engage with the world around them. Utilizing VR and other forms of interactive media, H360 is designed to foster compassion and dialogue around critical issues youths encounter in the world today. Our goal is to foster dialogue, compassion and action.
Humanity 360 is designed to bring the world into the class room. Each unit provides the student insight into the daily reality of individuals faced with certain challenges around the world. The immediacy of being immersed in someone else's perspective allows for learning to occur on an emotional rather than intellectual level. We want to provide youths with the ability to learn about the lives of others, understand the world around them and have the tools to make mindful and heartful decisions.
Our goal is to increase global social awareness within youths and to encourage compassion and dialogue. The results of this type of education last for a lifetime and as they are character-building. Our goal for the first year is to offer this program to 200 children in the greater Cleveland area. By summer 2018, we strive to have the program implemented in high school curriculums; expand the reach of this project across additional US states and to take it on the road with a mobile classroom.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
