Currently sexual harassment is dominating global news networks, with more and more women (and men) speaking out against their alleged harassers, opening the doors a sub culture of silence and denial in both Hollywood and elsewhere. Whilst the issue of sexual harassment and violence has made headlines because of big name film stars, in reality this affects people all over the world. To tackle the issue, Morgan Mercer, who previously served as the Head of Digital for an e-commerce startup, founded Vantage Point, which aims to stop sexual harassment through immersive education.
Combining scientifically-backed training techniques with a fully-immersive educational platform, Vantage Point wants to leverage immersive technology such as virtual reality (VR) and 360-degree video to combat sexual violence. It’ll focus on key areas such as; identifying, changing stigma and bias; Bystander intervention (passive, active); Response training (responding with empathy to victims); Real-time individual reaction training and Sexual harassment identification.
To make this a reality Vantage Point has setup an IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign to raise money for its solution, a framework of modules featuring content from a survivor-centric stance.
Vantage Point’s Framework is as follows:
Menu & Pre Assessment – assessment of attitudes, beliefs, grasp of core learning concepts
Experience Simulation – simulated scenario based on real-life situation, presented with the ability to choose reaction / action in a setting
Survivor Narrative & Global Impact Graph – real sexual assault and harassment survivors narrate his / her related experience and show how the experience impacts the survivor on a long-term scale, shows the user the global impact of (in)action taken
Individual Impact Graph – shows patterns in behaviour, how (in)actions impact statistics and sexual assault landscape on global long-term scale
Response Training Simulation – trains user on how to respond, react to situations, allows users to learn in a safe simulated environment
Post-Assessment – post-assessment of attitudes, beliefs, grasp of core learning concepts.
The campaign aims to raise $650,000 USD to help build the platform – with IndieGoGo’s flexible funding the minimum Vantage Point aims to achieve is £12,500 to begin production. Pledges start from as little as $1, but for those who wish to access the content you’ll need to back the $40 tier which includes exclusive access to the prototype the company estimates will launch in February 2018.
Check out the IndieGoGo page for further details, and as the campaign progresses, VRFocus will keep you updated.
via Mint VR