Flying with Virtual Wings

How a young entrepreneur wants to use virtual reality to help young people in conflict zones to achieve their dreams.

Youth who have experienced conflict often have big dreams for jobs, but they can’t know what those roles actually entail, because they lack role models they can relate to, and there are few — if any opportunities for actual work experience. So they get into a role without full context and often are disappointed and suffer mental health challenges / depression as a result of the employability options they face.

This is what Nada Ibrahim Hassan Hussen dreams of changing through technology skills training and a VR platform that she’s in the early stages of developing. Hussen is Programmes Manager at Athar, a non-profit organization based in Rusifeh, Jordan (a sub-grantee of Mercy Corps). Athar works on developing young people’s resilience to conflict through giving them technology skills in partnership with training platform Pluralsight as a path to better employment.

She started exploring the idea of using VR to give those youths a preview of roles so they can see what lie ahead, understand the options available to them in different industries, and generally help cast…