Greater Manchester VR specialist and educational technology provider, Near-Life, is working alongside the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy.
The partnership will deliver a new, interactive learning project to support the humanitarian response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
The Norwegian Refugee Council has been at the forefront of the response to the Ukrainian crisis throughout, and this new interactive learning project is designed to promote a grounding in Humanitarian access and principles for the NRC’s agency partners on the ground in Romania.
Utilising a mixture of interactive video, decision based scenarios, documentary-style films and written content and quizzes, the course is being made available for free on the Humanitarian Leadership Academy’s Kaya platform.
Providing humanitarian assistance can be a challenging task as humanitarian organizations often work in complex and dangerous environments. The immersive, virtual learning scenarios, built using Near-Life’s interactive tool, are designed to support experiential learning – giving learners an opportunity to experience some of the most common situations faced around humanitarian access and principles, without the dangers of being physically present.
Carlo Gherardi, NRC’s regional director for Central & Eastern Europe said: “Our response to the Ukrainian crisis has involved working with local partners in Ukraine, Romania, Poland and the Republic of Moldova. This project will help give our colleagues who are new to humanitarian response an effective grounding in some of the core principles around humanitarian access.”
Near-Life co-founder Geseth Garcia added: “As one of the early adopters of our immersive learning technology, [NRC] understand the value of branching scenarios and interactive video for education…This new will hopefully support the humanitarian efforts underway during this incredibly difficult time.”
The course, initially available in Romanian can be accessed for free here at kayaconnect.org
