Safecity Monthly Update: September 2015

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.

September 2015 was an eventful month for us. We kickstarted two major projects in Mumbai; the Campus Ambassador Programme which aims at creating safer public spaces for women and for speaking up against sexual violence and the NSS Programme where Safecity has teamed up with the Mumbai University NSS Unit to take the fight against sexual harassment to colleges across the city. In this effort, Safecity has been sanctioned a 10 hour project with 11 colleges for the year 2015-2016.

We had a major breakthrough in August where we took our on ground efforts to Goa.  We conducted our first ever workshop with the students and staff of Don Bosco College, Panjim. Read the report on this workshop on our blog.

Anu from Safecity conducting the Workshop in Goa

Our CA Programme began in September with our first workshop with Sophia College students. More on the workshop and pictures on our Facebook page, here.

We conducted workshops on Gender Sensitivity and Sexual Harassment with the NSS students in 4 colleges as a part of the NSS Program. Check out more information and pictures from the workshops at the participating colleges; H.R. College, Government Law College, Sophia College and UPG College of Management.

From the workshop at H.R. College as part of the NSS Programme.

The NSS Unit of Government Law College scripted and performed a street play “Ab Toh Bolo Kuch!” on Street Harassment in mid September at 3 different locations. The play aimed to bring to light the need to increase reporting of sexual harassment in public spaces which more often than not go unreported. Read the report on the street play and see some delightful pictures from their performances on our blog.

NSS Volunteers from GLC performing the Street Play at Marine Drive.

Safecity and Vacha Resource Centre for Women and Girls have undertaken a campaign together where we are training around 20 girls, aged between 13 to 18 years, associated with Vacha Resource Center for Women and Girls to undertake a campaign on sexual harassment in their basti (slum area) located in Sanjay Gandhi Nagar, Jogeswari (East).

As a part of this joint effort, we conducted two workshops last week with the girls on mapping and survey of Sexual Harassment. Read the reports on the workshops on our blog.

Mapping Sexual Harassment.

On 30th September, 2015, we conducted a training workshop with 26 staff members, 24 women and 2 men of Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) on gender, sexual harassment, the laws related to sexual harassment in public spaces and the workplace. Check out the workshop in pictures on our Facebook Page here.

We’ve gone international! 

Kenya

Jane Anyango from Polycom development project in Nairobi, and Elsa DSilva, Managing Director of Safecity  are Vital Voices Lead fellows. Together their organisations have won a grant from Vital Voices to undertake an extensive mapping of sexual violence in Kibera. Our team member Salini Sharma was in Nairobi, Kenya in mid September to train the Polycom Development Project staff.

Salini from Safecity with the Polycom Development Project Team in Nairobi, Kenya

And over the next few months the Safecity team will be supporting the Polycom team with technology, data analysis and capacity building efforts. Check out more pictures from the trainings in Nairobi here.

Nepal

Supreet Singh and Salini Sharma from our team are currently in Kathmandu, Nepal to train the staff of our partner organisation in Nepal, Social Empowerment by Empowering Women (SEEW).

Supreet and Salini from Safecity in Nepal with Samjhana Phuyal, (Founder, SEEW) and team.

TEDx Talk!

Our Co-Founder and Managing Director, the amazing Elsa D’Silva gave a TEDx talk in Washington DC  organised by TEDxMidAtlantic this month! We’ll be sharing the video of the talk as soon as it’s released.

Safecity Managing Director Elsa D’Silve speaking at TEDxMidAtlantic

TweetChats

Apart from all of these activities on ground, we have been facilitating important conversations around women’s issues through weekly tweetchats. Conducted by our wonderful Twitter Curators, the subjects range from teaching children the importance of financial independence to experiences of navigating the city as a woman to feminism and writing, wage parity and the difference women in decision making positions can make to gender parity. We have storified and blogged these chats for your reading pleasure. Check out the awesome tweetchats on our blog here, here, here, here and here.

Poster from one of our TweetChats

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