Safecity Monthly Updates : August 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.
#MySafecity
Safecity has launched a new series of chats called MySafecity in Twitter’s Blue Room where we interview various people and organisations on their views about Gender Based Violence and women’s safety issues. These chats are covered live on Periscope.
Our first chat was with a French organisation –Womenability which is travelling around the world and visiting cities run by female Mayors. Its Co-Founders Audrey Bec and Julien Fernandez are collating data through a survey to find out spaces where women feel safe and unsafe and what can be done to create safer, gender inclusive environments. You can watch our chat with Womenability here where we spoke to them about women friendly public spaces.
Our second guests were the Co-Founders of Zero Tolerance –Ruben Richard Mascarenhas and Aditya Paul where they discussed their work on gender based violence by creating awareness about the importance of by-stander intervention, awareness of legislation, police sensitivity and citizen activism. You can watch our Chat with Zero Tolerance here.
Safecity’s third guest for #MySafecity chat was the hilarious Radhika Vaz talking about her new book- ‘Unladylike’.
Her memoir- Unladylike is so called as a rebellion against all the restrictions put on ladies by society. She specifically spoke about the need to assure and ensure women unconditional safety no matter who they are, where they are from or what profession they have. You can watch our chat with Radhika here.
These were the total impressions from our #MySafecity chats for the month of August-
Safecity Walk
Safecity and Womenability joined hands to organise a safety walk in the streets of Khar on 5th August, 2016. With 30 enthusiastic participants, we took three routes and marched around the streets, for the first time actually taking note of all the ditches, broken pavements, overflowing garbage bins, signposts, transport, shops, roads and the people around. Everyone realised the need and importance of being situationally aware at all times.
When we returned from the walk, we discussed our observations from the three routes and transformed all the issues that were evident into potential solutions of making the city better and safer through agents of change like women, men, NGOs and public authorities.
Gender Mela
Safecity, with its partner organisation Action India, held a Gender Mela on 31st August, 2016 in Sanjay Camp. This Mela was welcomed with open arms by not just the families of Sanjay Camp but also by the members of Dakshinpuri. The idea behind holding a Gender Mela was to join hands in solidarity, not just with organisations who participated and provided us with support, but also with the members of these two communities to understand and take charge of issues pertinent in their areas, to make them violence free, just and equal for all.
The Mela had different stalls on vast issues – Safe Spaces(Safecity), Know your rights, Career Counselling, Menstrual Health, One Billion Rising and Sustainable Development Goals. The Gender Mela was a successful event and witnessed a great outreach, with people from all age groups and gender participating in the same during the entire event.
Public Transport — An Emerging Hotspot of Sexual Harassment
According to the analysis carried out by Safecity to identify the reports pertaining to public transportation spaces, an alarming one-fifth of all the data collected are incidents that happen in a public transportation space of some kind. Although this data contained reports from multiple countries, barring a negligible percentage, the data entirely contains incidents collected from various parts of India. The team went ahead to split up the incidents on the basis of common modes of transport and some general terms related to transport using keyword separations
Analysing the reports based on both the mode of transport and the type of harassment, it was rather derivatively seen that the bus remained as the mode which reported the most number of incidents across all types of harassment, while airport remained the least. You can find a detailed article by Abhijith Asok, our Head Data Scientist, about sexual harassment in public transport spaces here, published on YourStory.
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 Ayesha’s story on our blog here.
When we asked Ayesha what changed for her since she began working with Safecity, this is what she had to say –
“Safecity believes in overall development and growth in a positive direction. This attitude, I must admit is something which is highly infectious. It motivates you to move towards your goal in a positive way. It has made me believe that change can begin from just with ONE individual, you don’t need anything else to bring about change except for a positive attitude and a willpower to create impact. This has allowed me to fight for my right without fear of being withheld at someone else’s cost, and surely developed me into a courageous and active individual.”
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 Ngwentah Berlyne Ngwalem, from Safecity Cameroon, a revolutionary activist who loves to advocate for social change and works with several organisations in Cameroon and abroad to achieve social dynamism here.
“Because of my work in conjunction with Safecity I can reflect on the data collected to have a better understanding of the experiences of people to educate them and expand our work in Cameroon and globally. When people refer to me as someone from Safecity, it’s a feeling of pride and joy that people are growing familiar with Safecity in Cameroon and our work collectively. I believe that I have contributed in giving Safecity an exclusive yet unique view of the issues of public safety and gender based violence in Cameroon.”
SDG 4- Decent Work & Economic Growth For All– A Gendered Perspective
For the entire month of August, Safecity made a case about the disparity and inequality in pay, work opportunities, chances for development and safety in the economic sphere especially with relevance to women and girls and the problems they face due to it. Through numerous Tweetchats, expert curators and blogs, our focus was on UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 8 – ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth for All’.
Check out our comprehensive blog on all the discussions we conducted this month on SDG 8 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 four TweetChats on the importance of empowering women through decent work to ensure economic growth, economic safety of women with regard to equal pay and opportunity in the workplace, the need to develop women economically to simultaneously help them develop socially and the significance of art and culture in economic safety as well. The focus was on SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth and different aspects related to it and the safety of women.
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!
