24 Hour VR English Lesson Fundraiser

Two months ago, Michael of Gold Lotus in partnership with Educators in VR, did a 24 hour VR English lesson in Altspace, ENGAGE and rumii in order to raise money for the Italian Red Cross of Lecce.

During the 24 hours we covered topics such as travel, food and culture and had a range of internataional special guest speakers such as leading VR/AR healthcare innovator Dr Sana Farid, Dubai-based education consultant Steve Bambury and even two inspiring Canadian school students who shared their experience on everything related to VR, technology and education.

If you didn't get a chance to attend, here is the link to almost all of the 24 hours (24 individual hour lessons held consecutively).

Here are some photos from the event:

The event was a huge success, with more than 2,000 Euro raised in the short period just before, during and shortly after the event. This was raised on GoFundMe and was withdrawn in 4 tranches, 3 at the end of March and 1 at the start of April. For transparency here is the record of the money being withdrawn from GoFundMe and into the account of the Italian Red Cross of Lecce:

Why the Event? Why the Italian Red Cross of Lecce, Italy?

The Coronavirus is becoming a growing concern and it is imperative that doctors, nurses and those working in healthcare are supported so they can do their jobs effectively and safely, to ensure that we can minimise the spread.

Despite being English, my home is Lecce, in southern Italy. The south of Italy is drastically underprepared for the growing number of cases being seen, as confirmed by Professor Caruso, President of the Italian Society of Virology. For this reason, I felt the responsibility to contribute to the needs of the community in that difficult moment.

As a result of more stringent lockdown measures put in place by the Italian government, the spread of the virus has been slowed drastically - in Italy at least. This is not to say that we are out of the woods yet, it will take many years, if ever, to recover from this. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to every single person who donated, along with the support of the Educators in VR guests, attendees and importantly the moderators and volunteers who supported the smooth running of the event. It would have been infinitely more difficult to manage such a difficult task without their help. Please check out the work going on with Educators in VR here.

What the Donations Covered

The donations covered the purchasing of two sets of specialised protective equipment which you can see in the photos below. One set of this kit costs 1,000 Euro each, and two were purchased to support the safe transportation of COVID19 patients. The rest of the money was spent on personal protective equipment such as face masks, gloves and the like for other volunteers. Here's an idea of the work which is going on by those admirable people: