Charity Joins Virtual Reality World

A children’s charity has taken up residence in a virtual reality site to encourage teenagers to report bullying and seek help. The NSPCC are setting up an outpost of the helpline ChildLine at the popular teenage community site, Habbo.co.uk, in a two-month stay.

NSPCC hope that ChildLine will boost its visibility and encourage young people to talk about issues that are bothering them.

Over the next few weeks the charity will be holding events and activities on the website to get young people involved in a campaign to end bullying. As well as lining up celebrities to hang out and chat to users, there will be a competition to perform an anti-bullying play. The charity will also ask users for their views and experiences in a bullying poll.

Habbo is a virtual hotel where users create a pixel character and engage with other users over an instant messenger system. This enables users to be anonymous, which campaigners believe will help them to come forward and seek help. Every month the site attracts more than 650,000 unique users aged 11 to 18, and has over 42 million page impressions. It also has localised Habbo communities in 29 countries on five continents.

The NSPCC’s move follows an earlier awareness campaign on the site, Don’t Hide It, which was visited more than 300,000 times. Then Habbo set aside a calm space within its public and private rooms as the NSPCC Zen Garden and a robot was programmed to direct users to the charity’s site.

Virtual community sites such as Habbo.co.uk have become increasingly popular with organisations who want to communicate with teenagers. Other charities and campaigning groups – including anti-drugs campaign Frank – are already running campaigns on the site and and the government sexual awareness campaign, R U Thinking, is also planning a venture there.

Stephanie Hughes, the NSPCC’s new media communications manager, said: “Websites like Habbo are so much a part of teenagers’ lives that it is vital we as an organisation communicate our campaign messages to youngsters in their natural browsing environments and through brands and websites they trust.”