A video production company based in the Cape Town Central City is using the power of Virtual Reality (VR) to raise awareness about the challenges street children face.
Says Brendan Stein, creative and managing director at Soapbox Films: “While driving in to work on a cold winter morning, I saw some street children and streetpeople sleeping outside and this made me wonder where they had come from and what their stories were.
“This sparked a conversation with my team and we felt that VR or 360-degree video would be an excellent way to put more-privileged people into the shoes of street children and help everyone understand them and their plight better. And while, on a day to day basis, Soapbox Films focuses on telling stories - whether in corporate videos or documentaries in normal HD videos - we believe that VR is the ultimate way to make viewers part of an amazing story and to be immersed in the story itself.”
Subsequently, Soapbox Films contacted The Homestead Projects for Street Children to offer the organisation their services free of charge to produce a 360-degree video to assist with fundraising and raising awareness about the challenges street children face. One of the Cape Town Central City Improvement District’s (CCID) own NGO partners, the Homestead provides accommodation, family reunification and reintegration services to boys living on the street.
“They jumped at the idea and provided a lot of help and guidance,” says Brendan.
According to Paul Hooper, director for The Homestead: “The Homestead Projects for Street Children is a comprehensive response to the plight of chronically neglected and abused children that end up on the streets of Cape Town. These are traumatised kids that really need a completely new chance on life. And the great thing is that we can give these boys a future. We’re not just holding children, we’re unpacking them, taking all the anger away, we’re taking all the trauma away, we’re taking all the hurt way and we’re giving them the education and the skills so they can be healthy adults.”
In the 360-degree video partly filmed at The Homestead shelter premises, a 17-year old boy narrates his story, revealing how he ended up on the streets and how the NGO is assisting him. As a result, viewers get a first-hand experience of what street children go through every day and how they live at The Homestead.
The Soapbox team recently demonstrated the 360-degree video via VR headsets to the staff of the CCID, whose own Social Development team liaise extensively with The Homestead as one of the organisation’s NGO partners.
Commenting on the video, CCID fieldworker, Mark Williams said it felt surreal: “I’ve been at The Homestead many times as we work closely with them and seeing the video felt like I was right there on their premises.”
Brendan, a creative with over 20 years of experience, explains that VR is a 360-degree ball or sphere of video that, through the use of a headset or a 360-degree player such as the ones available on YouTube and Facebook, puts the viewer inside that sphere: “The viewer can then look around them and everywhere they look there is video and, in a way, they are transported to that particular environment. We find that the body and brain are often fooled into feeling that, as you’re watching, you’re really somewhere else.”
About The Homestead’s 360-degree video, Brendan says: “The response has been fantastic, and people have engaged with it.
“Part of it has been emotional; the feeling that you’re standing in The Homestead shelter dormitory with the child as he tells you his very personal story. The human connection is still there even though you can’t see his eyes - we had to blur out the children’s faces for legal reasons. Another response has been practical; seeing the kind of environment that many of the children come from and feeling like you are there amongst the shacks gives the viewer an insight into where the kids come from.”
The 360-degree video will be used by The Homestead for future fundraising events, for which Soapbox Films will provide VR headsets so that attendees can “explore” The Homestead. Paul encourages those who are interested in attending or helping with fundraising events to contact the organisation via info@homestead.org.za: “By supporting The Homestead directly, you are helping to save over 135 street children a year from the street, provide residential care to 90 street children each night and keep 300 chronically neglected and abused community children at home, at school and away from street life each week.
“We have always encouraged people to visit our centres to see our work for themselves because it is very different from reading about it. Those who visit always come away most impressed and surprised that we can offer such high-quality, therapeutic and developmental projects for street children in South Africa. And, after the visit, they have a better understanding of how The Homestead has managed to reduce the number of children living on the streets of Cape Town by over 90%, and why we are getting such outstanding education results and are able to successfully transition youth out of care and on to independent living without having them return to the street as young adults.
“Now, thanks to the 360-degree video, you don’t necessarily have to visit our centre to still get the same real perspective of who we are, what we do and how we live our vision that ‘no child should live, work or beg on the streets of Cape Town and that every child should live in a community with a family’”.
According to Pat Eddy, manager of CCID Social Development: “The collaboration between Soapbox Films and The Homestead is wonderful and speaks to the spirit of the ‘Show you care’ message which we, as the CCID, promote throughout the year and amplify with our current ‘Show you care’ winter drive to help make Cape Town’s cold and wet conditions a little bearable for the most vulnerable in the CBD and surrounding communities.
“We believe that each one of us can do our bit to ‘show we care’ towards someone who needs it most or towards the organisations that assist with alleviating challenges faced by our streetpeople community, and what Soapbox Films is doing pro bono is an example of that.”
The CCID’s annual “Show you care” winter drive runs from June until September. It is aimed at raising public awareness about the plight of streetpeople during the colder months and about the work carried out by the organisation’s Social Development department whose members engage with the Central City’s most vulnerable individuals and form partnerships that will alleviate the CBD’s own challenges.
Brendan concludes: “We get involved in a wide variety of 360-degree video productions, from corporate to training videos and social media content. But fundraising projects such as the one with The Homestead are some of our favourites as they really demonstrate the power of VR to put the viewer somewhere else, make them feel something and hopefully take action.”
Images by Soapbox Films (Opening image and 17-year old boy narrating his story at The Homestead shelter premises) and CCID Online Coordinator, Scott Arendse (CCID Finance & HR assistant Mary-Ellen Joseph viewing the 360-degree video)