The UN wants to see how far VR empathy will go

Last year, the United Nations added a new tool to its fundraising arsenal: virtual reality. With the help of studio Vrse.works, it released Clouds Over Sidra, a mini-documentary following a 12-year-old Syrian refugee. Since then, it’s been increasingly accepted that VR can boost philanthropy by connecting viewers more deeply to a subject — that, as a member of Vrse.works put it, a headset is "the ultimate empathy machine."
There’s some early evidence to bear this out. A 2015 fu