Safecity Monthly Updates : August 2018

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.

Save the Boy Child- Save the Girls

Sexual violence is a growing reality that we face today. How do we put an end to it? When we raise our children equally and teach them to respect consent and boundaries, we can prevent sexual violence. We can save them, ALL of them!

“When we teach our children to respect equality, consent and boundaries, to value other lives as our own, we will be building a future that will be devoid of violence against women and girls. If we bring up our boys with such values, our girls will not need saving.”- Supreet K Singh, our Director and COO, who directed the short film. Read more about it here.

Youth Innovation Challenge

The Youth Innovation Challenge, part of the Urban Thinkers Campus, is a social incubator designed to engage the youth of Mumbai to work on hyper-local, community based solutions to address Gender inclusive City Planning and its intersection with Mobility, Environment and Governance through a 4-month programme.

Our top 12 finalists attended their first experiential session on 4-5th August at the Magic Bus Centre, Karjat. Here, they learned how to present their idea with the help of a Business Model Canvas and learned more about themselves and their teams through the activities. You can read more about it here.

Boomerang at the #YouthInnovationChallenge #MagicBusCentre #USConsulateMumbai #BMWFoundation #TataCapital #Developmatrix #TheUrbanVision #SchoolLeaderNetworkIndiaTania Fernandes Renita Siqueira Vihang Jumle Latha Sankarnarayan Supreet K Singh Harnidh Kaur

Posted by Elsa Dsilva on Sunday, August 5, 2018

Here‘s a glimpse at some of the pictures.

The final pitch competition will be held on 13 December at Dosti House at the US Consulate of Mumbai. This challenge is sponsored by Tata Capital, BMW Foundation, knowledge partner – US Consulate General, Mumbai and outreach partner – School Leaders Network India Foundation.

Facebook live with Femme Con

In the lead up to Femme Con by TheaCare: Women’s Health Companion, Elsa D’Silva, our Founder, joined Swarnima Bhattacharya in a chat about Women’s Inclusion in Public Spaces. You can watch the conversation here.

Highlights from the Urban Thinkers Campus

Here are the highlights from the Urban Thinkers Campus we co-hosted on 21-22 June at ISDI ACE with DevelopmatriX and The Urban Vision beautifully put together by Sherwin Crasto. You can watch the video here.

Finalist at World Tourism Forum Lucerne

We are excited to announce that Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) is one of the 15 finalists for the WTFL (World Tourism Forum Lucerne) Start-Up Innovation Award, 1 of 3 in the category Impact! There were over 200 applications from 54 countries for the WTFL Start-Up Innovation Award 2018.

The WTFL Start-Up Innovation Camp is all about the most innovative business models from different industries around the world and we are honoured to be a part of it.

Special status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN

Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) is now an Organization in Special status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.

Consultative status for an organization enables us to actively engage with ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies, as well as with the United Nations Secretariat, programmes, funds and agencies in a number of ways.

Most Inspirational Women Entrepreneurs of 2018

Our Founder, Elsa Dsilva has been featured as one of the Most Inspirational Women Entrepreneurs of 2018 in TechnologyWidgets Magazine‘s 3D Flip Book! Check out pages 36-38 ?

You cab have a look at the entire magazine here- http://www.technologywidgets.com/july-2018/

Panelist at ‘Rethink’ by Breakthrough

Supreet K Singh, our Director and COO, was one of the panelists at Rethink by Breakthrough India in Patna on Friday.

Along with fellow panelists Dr. Usha Kiran Khan, Anindo Banerjee, Mona Sinha, Dr. Sunita Menon, she spoke about the importance of empowering girls by providing them with opportunities like educations, jobs, making use of Government schemes etc. She also spoke about her short film- ‘Save the Boy Child- Save the Girls’ which says #BetaPadhao #BetiBachao. You can read more about it here.

World Youth Day

On World Youth Day Vanshika Siya Deswal conducted two workshops on the importance of creating safe spaces for all for their development and growth with Shades of Happiness Foundation. You can read more about it here.

Updates from Patna

Naina Jha conducted an awareness workshop about sexual harassment for 7 students of Access, a school run by the US Consulate on 25th August, 2018. You can read more about it here.

Updates from Delhi

Titas Ghosh visited a community of people in Delhi to bring about awareness about sexual harassment. The communities feel it is necessary for women to speak out about their personal stories of harassment especially in places that is plagued with gender based violence and other crimes. You can read more about it here.

Updates from our DATA Analytics Team

This month was all about expansion. Besides our website and our mobile app, we’ve added social media ie. Twitter to our gamut of reporting platforms. People can report sexual harassment on Safecity’s crowdmap by tweeting their story with the hashtag #SafecityReport. Since tweetchats conducted on @pinthecreep on Fridays at 9 pm IST have gained momentum and become one of our trademarks over the past one and a half year, we have developed a dedicated dashboard to study its trends and engagement on different topics. We have also developed our very own Safety Survey which we intend to use to inform people about the perception of crimes in their cities. Finally, now that we’ve crossed the 11K mark on our crowdsourced reports, we’ve begun a thorough and detailed study of the descriptions in the reports.

–Vihang Jumle (Lead Data Analyst)

Sakshi Singh from the Data Analytics Team shares her experiences being a part of the team:

“I believe every nation has its own share of problems and a Utopian society is a far-fetched dream so we can either crib about it or take steps to bring change. I chose the latter and this was my motivation to join Safecity – the first step in my individual capacity to do something about the cause I strongly believe in. Also, I was fascinated by the way the organisation is leveraging existing data to reduce life-threatening situations.

There is no denying the high magnitude and frequency of sexual crimes in our country but after being exposed to the grass root level data through Safecity, reality struck hard. I now know the actual facts, figures and ground reality and it makes me paranoid sometimes. The road to stricter laws and amendments in existing laws is not easy but what if we can predict and prevent a mishap even before it happens; that will be the true realisation of the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. At Safecity, we can make it happen!

Working with like-minded people who share the same vision of having a city which safe for everyone at all times, Safecity has broadened my horizon of thinking and opened new gateways to explore and find solutions.”

The team is looking for an SEO profile to assist us with improving Safecity’s indexing on search engines. Please feel free to drop an email to vihang@safecity.in or mailme.vihang@gmail.com if you’re interested.

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.

Check out August’s storified tweetchats here – Housing Crisis and how it affects children, Women Empowering Women, Mob Injustice and Addressing Dissent and Engaging Men and Boys to Achieve Gender Equality.

#BeYourOwnSuperhero

Our campaign #BeYourOwnSuperhero celebrates people’s stories of valiance, courage and determination to break the silence and voice their rage against any form of harassment. You can have a look at some of their stories here. This campaign was designed by Tata Pro-Engage volunteer Radhika Shankar.

You can share your story and picture here: https://goo.gl/forms/LnwFByYspFeoUWgf2

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?

8th Sept- Second Session of the Youth Innovation Challenge (A social incubator) at Godrej- The Trees, Vikhroli
Every Friday at 9 pm IST/ 1130 am EST join us on Twitter @pinthecreep