As part of its Global Parents campaign, United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) Luxembourg and its Innovation team have launched a new product to aid in creating awareness of the Fund's humanitarian work all over the world.

The product presents, in a similar vein to other Unicef campaigns, the story of a child affected by disaster who is receiving help from the association. In this case, the child affected is twelve-year-old Sidra from Syria, who is one of 83,000 refugees currently living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. However, Sidra's story has not been presented through pictures or text, but rather through a film, observed through 360° glasses, which subsequently allow the viewer to be immersed in every corner of Sidra's world and seemingly witness first-hand her daily life at the camp.

Luxembourg has been at the forefront of this technological innovation, as one of the first countries to test out the 360° Oculus Rift glasses as part of Unicef's established Global Parents initiative. The technology was developed by start-up Oculus VR, who previously performed demos of other virtual reality platforms at the Fifth and Sixth Editions of ICT Spring Europe this year and last. The product employed in the Unicef campaign is entitled Oculus Rift and is comprised of a virtual reality head-mounted display with an OLED panel for each eye, allowing with its 'Constellation' rotational and positional tracking system for a full range of vision. A standard smart phone slots into the front of the headset to provide the video feed, and the connection betwen the two has been developed to be hardware-dependent.

The Global Parents initiative for which this technology is being used allows participants to donate a chosen amount monthly which then sponsors children around the world through Unicef projects. The priorities of these projects are of health, to reduce child mortality through nutrition, access to clean water and vaccination; education, to provide children with a solid basis to help them break out of the cycle of poverty through the creation of schools, training of teachers and distribution of educational materials; and protection, to ensure vulnerable children do not become the victims of violence, exploitation or abuse.

The glasses therefore represent an inventive new approach to the awareness campaign. The 360 degree, 1st person vision signifies a new medium for viewers to truly relate to a child halfway across the world. In the video, children run up to the camera and stare directly into the eyes of the observer, creating a completely new connection between Global Parent and child.

The visual interface firmly conveys the necessity of Unicef's campaigns to aid the 10.9 million Syrians who have been displaced as of November 2014, due to the conflict in the country which is now entering its fifth year. Refugee camps in Jordan, such as where Sidra lives, currently host 620,000 Syrian refugees, and this country alone requires $179,512,352 in funding to continue to provide supplies across all sectors in 2015.

Between January and October 2014 in Jordan, Unicef provided 1,159,063 children with the polio vaccine, 107,463 of the emergency-affected population with access to safe water, and 192,420 children with acees to psychosocial support services.

For more information on Unicef's international campaigns and becoming a Global Parent, visit https://www.globalparents.lu

Top photo by Geoff Thompson.

Bottom photo by Unicef Luxembourg