Identifying Street Harassment

Safecity conducted a workshop in collaboration with Gupshup at Kamla Nehru School with 80 students including both boys and girls on 16th April, 2019.

The subject of the workshop was Awareness on Street Harassment. It was shocking to know that the students were very much familiar with street harassment. Most of the students agreed that they had faced at least some form of street harassment, however when asked to share their stories, only 4 of the students volunteered.

In order to know what kind of harassment these kids face, Naina Jha started with a game called “Insult Game”. The students were asked to shout out the insults they faced on streets. Surprisingly many students came up with the different forms of verbal abuse they had witnessed on the street. Naina then help them categorize these insults in different forms of street harassment. The crowd of students not only included the victims of street harassment but also some students who themselves pass comments on other people.

In a role-play activity, Naina two students to join her in playing different scenarios, in the first scenario she asked one student to play the perpetrator and other the victim and in the second scenario she interchanged their roles. Both of the students felt bad when they were in the victims place. By the end of the activity they had learned to be more empathetic and knew how it felt being in the shoes of a victim that faced street harassment. The students swore never to ever be the one harassing someone again.