A documentary-style VR experience showcasing the Global Fund’s work in Tanzania

Background

Taking donors on a virtual site visit of the Global Fund’s projects in Tanzania.

For this project, the Rooftop team created three virtual reality (VR) experiences for our client, the Global Fund. Each video focussed on a core project area including HIV, TB and Malaria. In total, this project took four months from conceptualisation to delivery, including two virtual reality tours, the development of a customised app, and two YouTube videos for the Global Fund’s website.

Challenge

Bringing the work of the Global Fund to life through virtual reality.

The brief for this project was to bring the work of the Global Fund to life in virtual reality (VR), and show how effective the Fund has been in fighting HIV/Aids, TB and malaria in Tanzania, while also emphasizing the urgent need to keep fighting these diseases, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Global Fund wanted to give donors a VR experience that would replicate what they might see when travelling to Global Fund grantee sites in Tanzania, Africa. Rooftop was tasked with creating the VR experiences together with a custom VR app and headsets for deployment at various Global Fund events. The client wanted to show how they have a strong focus on enabling on-the-ground interventions, as well as how they are gathering key data which could help predict a future pandemic.

All of the interview candidates for the project were organised by the Tanzanian Heath Department. We worked very closely with the Global Fund and Tanzanian Government in pre-production to prepare the filming and travel logistics, on the ground production and post-production to produce a successful virtual reality experience.

Solution

Sharing stories of resilience and hope through VR experiences.

In partnership with the Global Fund and the Tanzanian Government, Rooftop spent 12 days in Tanzania in May 2022. We travelled to multiple locations to capture the life stories of community health workers on the frontline.

Rooftop’s aim for the virtual reality (VR) tour was to make viewers feel like they were having a first-hand, on-the-ground experience of the Global Fund sites in Tanzania. We wanted them to see, hear, and feel the environment around them, and to be impacted by the stories of the interviewees.

We chose a storytelling style to show how the Global Fund is tangibly empowering communities to fight back against HIV, malaria and other diseases. By following the lives of community health workers, the VR experience gives the viewer a chance to discover the communities, meet the people, visit the facilities where programs are being rolled out, and witness the lives of those being uplifted by them.

After we delivered the final products to the Global Fund, we received note-worthy compliments from the Global Fund Executive Director, Peter Sands, as well as the President of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan and parliamentarians in Denmark and Germany.