Safecity Monthly Newsletter : November 2017

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.

Secona Security Consultants’ Summit

Supreet K Singh, our COO and Director, was the keynote speaker at the Secona ASCM 2017 Conference in Vietnam last week where she spoke on how we use crowdsourced data to discern patterns and hotspots for sexual harassment in public spaces.

We are the City India- Rising Stars Top 50 awardees

Elsa Dsilva, our Founder, and Vandita Morarka, our Policy, Legal and UN Liaison Officer, are winners of the WeAreTheCityIndia’s Rising Stars Top 50 award! This was a joint event by WeAreTheCity and Barclays.

Annual Report- 2016-2017

Red Dot Foundation (Safecity)’s Annual Report for the year 2016-17 is out. It has been a busy and eventful year for us. Do have a read, send us your thoughts and contributions are always welcome.

Railway Station Safety Audits

Safecity conducted Safety Audits at three railway stations in the month of November. The objective of our audits is to assess the railway stations from the angle of safety and existing infrastructure. We also undertake conversations with commuters of all genders at the stations to understand the occurrence of sexual harassment at these stations. We are building an understanding of the needs of people and infrastructure for safer public transport (railways). The report will be available next month.

15th Nov – Women of the Future, London

Elsa DSilva was invited to speak at the prestigious Women of the Future Summit in London on 15 November where there were over 350 delegates from around the world. The patron of the summit was the Countess of Wessex who invited a few of the delegates including Elsa for tea at the Buckingham Palace.

17th Nov- Online Panel Discussion on ‘Balancing Business with a Purpose’

As part of the preparation for Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2017, Safecity hosted a panel discussion with women entrepreneurs who attended GES 2016. They shared their experiences at GES 2016 as well as their journeys as entrepreneurs and gave some useful tips to those attending the Summit this year. This panel discussion was in collaboration with SheThePeople and the US Consulate General, Mumbai. You can read more about it here and watch the discussion on our YouTube channel.

21st November- ‘Apps to Address GBV’

As part of Project 21, Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) hosted a panel discussion with women entrepreneurs who have created apps to address the issue of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) from different aspects. They shared their experiences of creating the apps and ensuring that they fulfil their purpose. This was in collaboration with Shethepeople and the U.S. Consulate General Mumbai as part of the GES 2017 entrepreneurship events.

21st Nov – Oxford University

Elsa Dsilva was invited to do a session at Oxford and share experiences about Safecity and using crowd-sourced data to address sexual violence. Over 30 students and faculty attended and she has now been invited to attend dinner at the High Table at Nuffield College which is the Social Sciences college.

28th November- Social Impact Lab Speaker Series 2017/18 at the University of Southampton

Elsa Dsilva was the first speaker at the Social Impact Leaders series this academic year hosted by Social Impact Lab at the University of Southampton. She addressed over 60 students and faculty and shared her entrepreneurial and leadership journey and key lessons learned from Safecity.

Safecity has been selected as a Legacy project and the University of Southampton will support students for 5 years in establishing a local Safecity chapter and assisting us in various other tasks.

29th Nov -Transforming Lives with Tech’- Nominet Trust conference

Nominet Trust is celebrating five years of NT100 – their global look at the tech initiatives transforming lives and communities. Elsa Dsilva, our Founder, was a part of their panel discussion ‘Transforming Lives with Tech’. Safecity was recognised as a social innovation by Nominet Trust’s NT100 in 2015.

Teachers’ Training Program on Child Rights

Ashwini Syed, the Head of Training and Operations, conducted two Teachers’ training programs for 100 teachers creating awareness about Child Sexual Abuse and Child Rights. These sessions were organised by Save The Children for teachers who teach in different Balwadis. You can read more about it here.

Updates from Patna, Bihar

Naina Jha conducted a gender sensitivity and awareness workshop for 120 parents at Patna Women’s College. Read about her experience here.

Visit to the Godrej Gender Resource Centre (GRC) in Ahmedabad

Ashwini Syed, Tania Echaporia and Noorjahan Ansari visited three communities in Ahmedabad on 3rd and 4th Nov. They visited the GRC community centre on the first day and then proceeded to meet families, predominantly Muslims, located near the centre. They spoke about Safecity, safety and security in general and stressed on the importance of reporting sexual harassment via our website or Mobile App. The second session was with women at the GRC centre where many of them shared their experiences of sexual harassment. The third session was at Chapee Rog Community where they met a group of 15 young girls and some women. Since they were previously acquainted with them our team members suggested that they make groups and demonstrate a play, a song or a skit on what they had learned through previous sessions. It was a great experience for both, our team members as well as the women. We thank Godrej Consumer Products for this opportunity.

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 Sai Pratiksha Balaji’s story on our blog here.

Pratiksha Balaji has done 4 internships with Safecity and is now leading a team of her own. When we asked Pratiksha about her experience doing an internship with Safecity, this is what she had to say –

“This internship has helped me grow personally as well as given me the satisfaction that I am doing something good. It had been a wonderful experience to be part of this organisation and surely helped me a lot. I know for sure this experience with Safecity will help me greatly in future and I am looking forward to working with them again.”

We have several opportunities for you to volunteer and take action. Do check our website.

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 Bailey Gent, who writes about her experience with Safecity’s Denver branch and her journey with us so far here.

“Bailey is passionate about educating people about the influence interpersonal and sexual violence has on our society. It is an excellent and important step to identify and acknowledge the issue, the next important step is the action steps. For this reason, allowing an avenue for reporting is critically important. Also focusing on prevention based education is important while being reactive to assault and harassment issues is important through reporting. Ultimately one day there will hopefully be less need to report because we have done well enough on educating.”

We are looking for a Program and Outreach Officer for Delhi and Bangalore. Do send your CV to [email protected]

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.

During November, we had tweetchats talking about different aspects of entrepreneurship leading up to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017. Check out the storified tweetchats here- The Use of Civic Tech, Is Women Entrepreneurship an Obstacle Race?, Social Entrepreneurship and Inclusion #GES2017 and Socialisation and GBV .

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!

What’s in store for Safecity?

4th Dec–SPS Seminar Series: Centre for Gender Violence Research– University of Bristol
8th Dec– Launch of Safecity Thiruvananthapuram with partner Liveable Cities by HealthBridge and ESAF in presence of Mr. Shashi Tharoor
10th Dec– Panel Discussion and Periscope for Human Rights Day
14th Dec– Design Thinking Workshop with Thinkizm and US Consulate General, Mumbai
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