Safecity Monthly Update- June 2016

Safecity is growing exponentially and we’re constantly working hard to translate our vision to reality. Because we don’t want you to miss out on our work, we’ve decided to put together a monthly column to tell you about what we’ve been up to. You can sign up for our newsletter here.

Safecity at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016

Our Founder & Managing Director, ElsaMarie D’Silva, was selected to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2016 at Stanford University in Silicon Valley California on June 23-24. Though more than 5,000 people applied, just about 700 entrepreneurs from 170 countries and territories were invited after a critical vetting process. The Summit showcased inspiring entrepreneurs, 350 investors and high level officials from around the world reflecting diversity of age, gender, geography, industry, and expertise as well as created new opportunities for investment, partnership, and collaboration. It helped address some of the most demanding global challenges.

The summit worked towards increasing entrepreneurial initiatives overseas in order to promote democracy, increase prosperity and counter violent extremism. Though just for 3 days, the summit proved to be a treasure trove for the participants by offering a wide range of workshops, panels, mentoring, and networking sessions which helped them gain skills, connect with industry experts and form long-lasting relationships.

Elsa Dsilva, a Fortune Program Alumna, met John Kerry, US Secretary of State, along with other Exchange Program alumni.

ElsaMarie was also invited to participate in a design thinking session hosted by Ambassador Cathy Russell,  which focussed on supporting the development of women entrepreneurs by bringing together a variety of entrepreneurs, ecosystem actors, and government officials working in this area.

Elsa DSilva with Evan Ryan, Assistant Secretary of State, Exchange Program

Elsa DSilva with Megan Smith, US Chief Technology Officer and Vital Voices Lead Fellow, Shareefa Fadhel

ElsaMarie attended a special event, the GES Entrepreneur Roundtable, which gave her the opportunity to talk with Secretary Pritzker as well as the chance to engage with fellow entrepreneurs in a more intimate setting. The focus of the discussion was on the obstacles and opportunities entrepreneurs faced in their countries and solutions to solve them.

Elsa DSilva with Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, Antonio Gracias and Brad Sheftel

ElsaMarie met numerous entrepreneurs from all around the world and spoke about the work she does to achieve the dream she has for Safecity. Celebrity venture capitalist John Doerr did a mini session on entrepreneurship in which he even quoted her, saying that it is harder for women to raise capital and that diversity isn’t at par, especially for women.

They heard from President Obama, Travis Kalanick-Founder of Uber, Brian Chesky- Founder of Air BNB, Sundar Pichai- CEO of Google and Mark Zuckerberg- Founder of Facebook amongst many others.

In his address to the delegates, President Obama said, “The world needs your creativity and your energy and your vision. Entrepreneurship empowers people to come together and tackle our most pressing problems.” There were many who had heard of Safecity and were impressed with the work Safecity is undertaking to make public spaces safer so that women and girls can achieve their potential to have a good quality of life.

Workshops addressing Sexual Harassment at the Workplace with Maruti and IDTR (Institute of Driving Training & Research)

Safecity was invited by Maruti to conduct an extensive training program with the ICC members to cement their understanding of sexual harassment at workplace and enable them to better understand the functioning of the ICC in prevention, prohibition and redressal of sexual harassment at workplace. This training was followed by awareness workshops for all the employees of the IDTRs.

Our Director, Supreet Singh, conducted a workshop in Baroda

The training objectives were to increase understanding of the IDTR employees about their rights and the laws that protect them as well as increase their gender consciousness. Safecity also help increase awareness on what constitutes sexual harassment, the Act and the redressal mechanism. The workshop led to an increased legal awareness on Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and an understanding of the functioning of Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). This awareness workshop impacted more than 100 employees.

Our Program and Outreach Officer, Salini Sharma, conducted workshops in Delhi

Using Location Based Trends to Increase Awareness, Precaution and Safety

Safecity not only provides a platform for anonymous reporting of sexual harassment and violence in public spaces but uses this data to effectively help users be aware of such incidents in and around their locality. By following the following steps anyone can sign up for alerts by just selecting the location of their choice and submitting their email address.

Through this service Safecity enables you to be aware and cautious while stepping out of the house. It can also be used to alert family and friends whenever such incidents occur.

Safecity Emerging Leaders

Safecity is celebrating the journey of people who have emerged as leaders as our campaigns progressed in their communities through our blog series “Safecity Emerging Leaders“. Read the inspiring stories of these individuals who are passionate about making their neighbourhoods safer with Safecity and have taken action in their own special ways.

Read this month’s Emerging Leader Rudraksh’s story on our blog here.

When we asked Rudraksh what changed for him since he began working with Safecity, this is what he had to say –

“Volunteering at Safecity was a great learning experience for me and it helped me grow as a data scientist and to consistently expect better standards of work from myself. I will now be beginning the Phase 2 of my project which involves Sentiment Analysis of tweets and I’m eagerly looking forward to it.”

Know Our Team

Know Our Team is a new blog series that attempts to bring to you the stories of our team, share our experiences, why we do what we do and special moments that have left an indelible mark in each of our lives.

Read this month’s blog by Samjhana Phuyal, our  partner in Nepal, who works towards empowering women to stand up for themselves against sexual violence here.

“Initially, it was difficult to get people to speak about their experiences of sexual harassment. During report collection I encountered many stories that I thought I alone had faced growing up. Data shows that nearly 80% of women and girls face sexual harassment before the age of 16. Harassment in public spaces is so engrained in our society that nobody talks about it or even reports to the police. At a recent Television interview that I was invited to, one of the co-speakers was a Senior Police officer who had never heard of such cases, for the simple reason- women don’t report to the police! Continual ignorance of harassment in public places gives rise to greater problems like sexual assault and rape.”

SDG 6 : Clean Water and Sanitation– A Gendered Perspective

For the entire month of June, Safecity made a case for clean water and sanitation, especially with relevance to women and girls and the problems they face due to lack of it. Through numerous Tweetchats, expert curators and blogs, our focus was on UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ‘Ensure Access to Clean Water and Sanitation for All’.

Check out our comprehensive blog on all the discussions we conducted this month on SDG 6 here.

TweetChats

Through our tweetchats we are trying to facilitate important conversations around various issues related to gender in general and women’s issues in particular.

Our curators this month conducted 3 TweetChats on the issue of lack of access to water and sanitation, gender and SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation and one TweetChat on discussions clearing myths about menstruation.

Check out the storified tweetchats here, here, here and here.

That’s all for this month. Keep watching this space and we’ll keep you updated on all our work and exciting activities every month!