Safecity Monthly Updates – April 2022

Safecity is committed to creating safer communities for everyone. Our goal is to empower citizens by helping them understand the potential risks they could face in different neighbourhoods. We can do this by sharing our experiences or others anonymously and make these stories available for all. The platform serves law enforcement agencies with information on sexual harassment and other crimes occurring in public and private spaces. The platform’s data helps keep public spaces safe by enabling authorities to keep track of incidents and prevent sexual harassment in the future.

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RDFG with the NGO Committee on Social Development

Red Dot Foundation Global (RDFG) joined the NGO Committee on Social Development in March 2020 at the very beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns and contributed for two years as part of this Executive Committee, where we actively participated in engagement / civil society forum and UN DESA / member state engagement remotely. We were the only NGO amongst global membership to have a featured speaker for two years running. 

Our term as vice-chair ended on 15 April 2022, where we are proud to have managed digital advocacy, spearheaded ILO C190 engagement for the committee as well as member state engagement, while also working as a part-time treasurer for the committee. Read the entire report here.

 

The 12th International Anti-Street Harassment Week (3rd April to 9th April, 2022)

Worldwide, statistics show that 80% of women endure frequent street harassment, 45% feel that they cannot go alone to public spaces, 50% have to cross the street to find alternate routes to their destinations, 80% feel the need to be constantly alert when traversing local streets and 9% have had to switch careers to escape the area in which harassment occurred. This problem is not only transnational, but also transcultural and affects people of all identities, races, and ages—every day!

The 12th International Anti-Street Harassment Week from 3rd April to 9th April 2022 was co-hosted by Red Dot Foundation – Safecity.

We encouraged individuals and organisations to speak up about street harassment to highlight the pervasive nature of this phenomenon and how it affects the victims negatively. The goal was to increase civic awareness and spur individuals as well as authorities to take action and curb this menace.

The campaign included various online and on ground engagement activities from posting videos, slogans, blogs, tweetchats, Instagram Live(s) and social media posts.

131 individuals and 33 organisations actively took part and all of the responses were captured on a Padlet.

51.1% of the participants have themselves experienced street harassment and want it to stop.

47% of the participants sent in slogans – calling for street harassment to STOP!

39.7% felt the need to report their experiences on the Safecity platform while 31% wrote blogs to end street harassment. 

Bioscope Stories Vs Bollywood

The content we consume has a big influence on our ideologies. The movies we watch and the songs we listen to all help to reinforce the ideas depicted in the movies about love and romance in a wide range of ways.

When we imbibe the toxic romantic beliefs depicted in Bollywood cinema, we create a problem that impacts the safety of women resulting in heinous crimes.

In an attempt to challenge this, Red Dot Foundation partnered with Ogilvy Singapore to create this video. Do watch it here.

Sign this petition to appeal to writers and producers of Bollywood films to stop producing movies that glorify the notion that harassment out of romance is acceptable.

Let us set good examples for men to follow and subsequently create a safer world for women to live in.

For more information, visit www.bioscopestories.com

 

The Brave Movement Global Survivors Action Summit

 

Red Dot Foundation is a part of the Brave Movement. The Brave Movement hosted a Global Survivors Action Summit on April 27, 2022. Here are the social media highlights.

The Summit was the first moment in which the Brave Movement came together, including survivors and allies, to align on their demands to end childhood sexual violence. The G7 nations will meet soon and the Brave Movement will insist that ending child sexual violence is on the agenda.

9 survivors of childhood sexual violence from the Brave Movement from G7 countries and beyond are urgently calling on leaders of the world to take bold and transformative action when they meet in June to end childhood sexual violence.

Childhood sexual violence is a global scourge, which at least one in five girls and one in ten boys experience.  It has devastating long-term consequences for children, families, and societies. And the COVID pandemic has exposed children to even greater risk.

Ending this scourge is essential for all humanity and it demands a coordinated international response. #BeBrave and sign the petition. You can also sign the Hindi version of the petition here.

 

Roundtables on LGBTQIA+ Inclusion

Red Dot Foundation is hosting a series of roundtables on LGBTQIA+ inclusion at workplaces and educational institutions. These are small curated discussions with 12-15 leaders in HR or CSR or DE&I.

On 11th March, RDF hosted an in-person roundtable discussion in Pune with the members of the LGBTQIA+ community to understand through their experiences the microaggressions that the community faces in educational institutes and workplace settings. The Founder of The QKnit, Mr. Sumit Pawar moderated the discussion.

This was succeeded by another roundtable in Mumbai on 1st April 2022 hosted by RDF along with its partners – the US Consulate General, Mumbai and SLN (School Leaders Network). This roundtable discussion was organized for heads of educational institutions. Francis Joseph from SLN (School Leaders Network) helped curate the guest list, which consisted of 13 Principals/Heads of educational institutions in Mumbai. The US Consulate hosted the event at Dosti House, US Consulate General, Mumbai. The event started with an introduction by our Founder, ElsaMarie D’Silva. 

The speakers shared their experiences in educational institutions and about the lack of inclusivity that they experienced while they were students. They expressed the need for educational institutions to have open channels of dialogue that would help in making these spaces inclusive for queer students.

This was followed by a moderated discussion among the principals, all of whom agreed that it is important to create a safe space for students to be heard and where they would all be accepted regardless of differences. They shared good practices already being followed in their institutions and some of the challenges being faced and suggestions for improvements.

They were asked to deliberate on 3 questions:

1. Inclusion v/s Protest
2. Acceptance v/s Tolerance
3. Complete wellbeing v/s Stigma

The Principals also requested that the points and best practices discussed be put together as a tool kit that could be shared with them. 

The Principals were encouraged to anonymously write down their key takeaways from the session or make a pledge and post these on a board. Here are a few:

“I will use gender-inclusive language more and more.”

“I pledge to be more mindful of the diversity that exists within my school and that mindfulness will be reflected in the language (verbal & non-verbal) that I employ in my interactions.”

“I will try to create more safe spaces in school.”

“No more starting a conversation with “ Ladies & Gentlemen”.”

“I will have group discussions with small sets of students and discuss their insights on gender identity and assertion.”

On 27th April 2022, RDF organised another roundtable discussion in collaboration with the Consulate General of Canada in Mumbai. This was a curated discussion with leadership from the public and private sectors to dialogue and share good practices on inclusive policies and organizational culture for LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

The outcome of this roundtable along with the others will be compiled in a final white paper for Human Rights Campaign. 

 

Queer Hifazat Fellowship

We are collaborating with The QKnit for our project “Queer Hifazat”. The project aims at creating safe spaces for the queer community and building a network of LGBTQI+ folks pan India.

Around 300 people enrolled for the fellowship and we shortlisted 160 folks from them. The purpose of this project is to build a community for queer folks, provide them with a safe space so they can share their stories and experiences with others and seek community support, share strategies and be heard without any judgement.

The year-long fellowship started with a one-month training and now the trained fellows are working on building communities and spreading awareness on LGBTQ+ issues in their network. Also, passing on the knowledge to the responsible representatives who can further share the message and help us reach a larger audience. This month we had a review meeting to discuss queries of people collecting reports on the Safecity reporting platform.

Queer Hifazat Fellow Interview: Rachita Juneja

“I am currently pursuing a Master’s in History from Delhi University. I got to know about the Queer Hifazat Fellowship through our college professor. I felt that this was a calling for me and I could make an impact in society, especially given how people are not aware of concepts like gender, sex and sexuality. I, myself, learned about these concepts through this fellowship.

As a responsible citizen, I have been trying to bring people together and make a community at my university. We organise discussions and seminars to raise awareness and brainstorm different ways in which we can make our surroundings safe for vulnerable groups. Queer Hifazat Fellowship has definitely helped me in handling and building a safe community for queer folx.”

 

Community Health Workers Trainings

We are training 4000 community health workers in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa on Covid-19 precautions, women’s reproductive health and women’s safety. Each training session is 6 hour long with 50 community health workers in one batch. Every participant is facilitated with a training kit. This project is in collaboration with HDFC Bank – Parivartan and will be a year-long engagement.

 

Special Capacity Building Program for Community Health Workers of Mumbai BMC

We are training 1,000 community health workers in Mumbai, Maharashtra on gender sensitisation, women’s and children’s safety, their rights as well as how can one use the Safecity reporting platform to report cases of sexual harassment and violence anonymously. 50 community health workers are trained in one batch. Every participant is facilitated with a training kit. This project is in collaboration with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and All India Institute of Local Self-Government (AIILSG).

This month we introduce you to our partner CORO

Safe Maharashtra Project

The aim of the project is to create safe neighbourhoods and communities in 5 locations in Western India through collaboration with local partner NGOs on the Safecity reporting platform. Red Dot Foundation is building the capacity of the partner organisations to use the Safecity reporting platform in their programming to end sexual and gender-based violence, create campaigns for women, girls and youth to report incidents and use the anonymous data collected to engage their communities and relevant institutional stakeholders to find solutions for safer spaces and neighbourhoods. Through this project, we will demonstrate how crowdsourced evidence-based data can be used to drive institutional change and engage communities in finding innovative solutions to improve safety and reduce violence against women and girls.

Under the Safe Maharashtra Project, Red Dot Foundation has partnered with 6 NGOs in Maharashtra to create safe neighbourhoods and communities. In Mumbai, we have CORO which is doing commendable work with us. 

The vision of CORO is to create a society based on equality and justice with no discrimination based on caste, gender, class, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age, amongst other factors. Their mission is to build a world based on equality and social justice by working with the most marginalized communities on facilitating leadership from within these communities to steer rights-based, collective actions for social change.

Through CORO, Safecity has reached out to 509 people which include staff and the community of CORO. The staff of CORO was provided with knowledge of online safety, gender sensitivity, laws related to women’s safety, online reporting of harassment, the Safecity platform as a crowdsourcing tool, etc. As agents of change, they reached out to the community and equipped them with this knowledge. The CORO team has collected 60 reports of sexual and gender-based violence on the Safecity platform, which is commendable. 

“The Safecity platform contains a lot of information like laws, FIR process, nearby hospitals, etc., and provides good knowledge. Through this app, we can enter information of any incident that occurred and can enter the exact location on the spot. People of our community have got this information through the Safe Maharashtra Project and we have got a very good response from our community.” – Community feedback from the NGO CORO.

SafeCircle

 

SafeCircle is a safe listening circle for survivors of violence and trauma to find support. During COVID-19 we have witnessed increasing numbers of cases of intimate partner/ domestic violence and online harassment. Through these listening circles, survivors will find a community of support, share strategies to address and prevent the violence and offer solidarity to peers. Since May 2020 we have been providing psychosocial support to over 25 survivors.
Read on to learn more about SafeCircle here.

If you would like to attend a SafeCircle please visit here. Sessions are held every fourth Friday of the month from 3 pm – 5 pm IST.

 

Intern Talks – Anna Anandita

 

“When I consider the journey thus far, it has been nothing short of a blessing. I was quite young when I started volunteering with Red Dot Foundation, everything was new to me. I have been conversing and working with folks from various backgrounds and ages. Everyone had something to teach me and have always encouraged me to go outside my comfort zone. In some ways, the experience has not only taught me about society’s different difficulties, but it has also helped me evolve as a person on a daily basis. I get a lot of pleasure from contributing to society. I consider myself fortunate for the same.”

 

Key points to understand through data – April

 

Click here to see the Safecity Data Dashboards.

 

Safecity Reporting Platform

Safecity is a platform as a service product that powers communities, police and city government to prevent violence in public and private spaces. Our technology stack collects and analyses crowdsourced, anonymous reports of violent crime, identifying patterns and key insights. This data enables citizens, researchers and policymakers to create safer spaces by:

• Increasing awareness, transparency and public accountability
• Improving policy and tactical precision with data-led insights
• Optimising budgets to more effectively allocate resources

Get in touch if you want to be a Safecity partner.

Report an incident on Safecity Platform

Download Safecity App on iOS Devices

Download Safecity App on Android Devices

 

Upcoming Events 

• May 5 – 02.10 to 02.50 pm EST – Elsa will be speaking at the Vital Voices Headquarters Leadership Talks in Washington DC.
• May 6 – 06.30 – 07.40 pm IST – Brave Movement India Stakeholders Briefing – Register here.
• Tweetchats every Friday at 9 pm IST on Twitter at @TheSafecityApp.

 

Ongoing Projects

• Queer Hifazat Project
• Cyber Safety supported by the U.S. Embassy, India and U.S. Consulate General, Hyderabad
• Safe Maharashtra in Mumbai, Pune and Satara
• LGBTQI+ Inclusion at Workplaces
• Community Health Workers Trainings with HDFC Bank – Parivartan
• Community Health Workers Trainings with City of Stuttgart
• Mentoring on Personal Leadership with Young Girls and Women with Adventures of the Mind