Safecity Monthly Updates : June 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.

Creating a Resilient and Inclusive City- Urban Thinkers Campus

Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) hosted an Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) in Mumbai as an Associate Member of the World Urban Campaign, on behalf of the UN Habitat and The Swedish Institute, post the Stockholm Gender Equality Forum. This event was in partnership with Developmatrix, The Urban Vision, The US Consulate Mumbai, Tata Capital, BMW Foundation, the Swedish Institute and ISDI. The focus of the event was Gender inclusive City Planning and its intersection with Mobility, Environment and Governance.

“Safety is the least thing a city owes to us- it’s what we as citizens must demand” – Kashmira Mewawala, Head- Business Development and Chief Ethics Counselor | Tata Capital

James Fennell, Cultural Affairs Officer at US Consulate General, Mumbai and Dosti House, Chief

Latha Sankarnarayan (Developmatrix), Elsa D’Silva (Safecity), Anju Pandey (UN Women India), Meghna Pant (Author), Faye D’Souza (Executive Editor Mirror Now), Prathima Manohar (The Urban Vision), Ashwini Syed (Safecity) and Harini Calamur (Writer & Entrepreneur) (L-R)

Reimagining a city from a youth and gendered perspective

Are cities designed for women and children?

How can we build resilience and inclusion in a city?

We had almost 175 delegates on 21 June participating in 9 interactive innovation labs and 3 panel discussions on the City We Need. Mrs. Kashmira Mewawala, Tata Capital gave an inspiring keynote to set the tone for the day and Mrs. Madeleine Sandstedt-Kjellberger, from the Consulate of Sweden Mumbai gave the introductory address. On 22 June we had the kick off for the Youth Innovation Challenge through a design thinking session facilitated by Mr. Amit Kundal, Design thinking faculty of ISDI ACE. We showcased 8 social innovations that were hyper-local, practical and innovative. Almost 100 participants actively engaged in the challenge for the day – Designing a waste bin for a differently challenged individual. Access the entire agenda here. You can read more about the Urban Thinkers Campus here.

Safe City Urban Design Primer

We also launched the Safe City Urban Design Primer at the Urban Thinkers Campus. The aim of the primer is to highlight urban design, policy strategies and citizen actions that can make for a more inclusive and safe urban environment for women. The Urban Vision and Safecity have worked together to create this primer which is supported by the Standford Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Collaboration Grant Initiative as part of the Omidyar Network Leadership Forum.

The Safe City Urban Design Primer was launched by Mrs. Madeleine Sandstedt-Kjellberger, (Consulate of Sweden, Mumbai).

You can view the primer here.

The Youth Design Innovation Challenge

Calling all youth to be part of The Youth Design Innovation Challenge, a continuation of the Urban Thinkers Campus. It is a social incubator designed to get youth to be actively involved in the City We Need by 2030. The challenge kicked off on 22 June. Currently, we are accepting entries up to 15 July and by 30 July will pick 10 best ideas for incubation. Over the next 4 months, we invite youth to participate in a social incubator to create solutions that are hyper-local and low cost innovations that seek to address Gender inclusive City Planning and its intersection with Mobility, Environment and Governance.The final pitch competition will be held on 13 Decemebr at Dosti House at the US Consulate of Mumbai. This challenge is sponsored by Tata Capital, BMW Foundation and our knowledge partner is the US Consulate of Mumbai.

How differently abled people use their body part in doing same activity as abled being do – topic given by Amit Kundal, a facilitator @ISDIACE

Participants discuss urban environment challenges

The teams can send in their application here – https://goo.gl/B3xNVr by 15th July 2018.
They can send their queries to [email protected].

For more information on the Challenge click here.

Safecity Global Digital GBV Toolkit

A collaborative effort between United Nations Alliance of Civilizations‘ Intercultural Innovation Award Alumni, On Our Radar based in UK and Safecity resulted in a digital GBV toolkit. The aim is that women and girls, men and boys understand the nuances of gender based violence, familiarise them with international legislation and equip them with resources they can use. There is a directory of audio stories that are being collected so that people can understand this kind of violence better and be sensitised about it. We will continue building these resources that can be used globally. Please do get in touch with us if you would like to know more.

The toolkit was launched by Mr. James Fennell, Cultural Affairs Officer at US Consulate General, Mumbai and Dosti House, Chief.

To access the digital toolkit please click here-https://www.onourradar.org/safecity-toolkit/

Featured in the Smart Marketing Tribe Magazine

Safecity got a special page in the Smart Marketing Tribe Magazine. It is a digital interactive magazine. You can click on different icons on the page and it leads you to our crowdsourced map to report sexual harassment in public spaces. Check out pages 110-111!

Poster Challenge in Bhekhavli, Satara

Safecity organised a poster challenge for the women in a village called Bhekhavli in Satara. They were asked to put down to paper the things they had learned in the workshops we had conducted with them and their experiences in the past 3 months. The challenge certainly brought out their creativity. Each poster speaks a thousand words.

Safecity is now on Oheyo

We now have a channel on Oheyo called ‘Safecity with Elsa D’Silva‘ where, Elsa, our Founder, answers questions related to the work that we do at Safecity, how it began, how the crowdmap works and the importance of reporting sexual harassment in public spaces. If you have any questions about Safecity and the work that we do, you can ask a question and Elsa Dsilva, our Founder, will respond.

Here is the link to our channel- https://www.oheyo.com/safecity

PayPal Singapore

Elsa D’silva, our Founder, spoke about her journey with Safecity at PayPal Singapore. Here are a few glimpses from her speech.

Global Media Forum

On 12th June, Elsa Dsilva, our Founder, was at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn. Her session, jointly hosted with Eirliani Abdul Rahman and supported by the German Federal Office’s Global Diplomacy Lab, explored the topic of Women Friendly Cities through a format called Creative Tensions.

There were over 20 people who participated and were asked to respond from their perspective on various scenarios and problem statements regarding safety, mobility, urban planning and quotas for women on planning commissions. Given the diversity in the room – nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age – we had very interesting responses which further provoked discussion and debate. Look out for our blog post on the topic shortly.

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 Namrata Sinha’s story on our blog here.

When we asked Namrata about her experience doing an internship with Safecity, this is what she had to say –

“I have seen a marked shift in my own attitude towards such incidents. I now myself report any such incident I notice around me, and encourage everyone else to do the same as well, for our reports and analyses are only as good as the data we receive. I feel like in my own small way, I am making my contribution towards a safer environment for women and all these endeavours will bring about a positive change in women safety in our society.”

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

Be Your Own Superhero

We think it’s time we celebrate the moments we have stood up to injustice and harassment, physical or emotional, for ourselves or others, in whatever way we could. Here is a chance to share your story of triumph because you are a SUPERHERO too!

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

Updates from our DATA Analytics Team

The Data Team had a session by Darwin AI on Machine Learning and Neural Networks to explore using our data in different ways. They undertook clustering of striking information from the description section of our dataset. The team has brought in innovations for the upcoming Safecity App to make the crowdmap more interactive and informative. Data needs constant updation and upgradation and our team upgraded their method of generating monthly dashboards by reducing the whole process down to a few clicks and are exploring more tools in automation. They are also overlaying our crowdsourced data with the official statistics to study trends and do a comparative analysis. Parallelly, the team plans on studying patterns in under-reporting.

Collaboration with DataKind Bangalore

DataKind Bangalore organised its first project accelerator of the year and Safecity was a part of it along with Pratham Books and Daksh India, two other NGOs. The aim of the workshop was to find ways of using data to accelerate social good and showcase the work each of the organisations was doing.

Vihang Jumle, our Lead Data Analyst, represented Safecity and spoke about how we use data at Safecity and the impact we have made so far.

Our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Vihang Jumle, represented Safecity as a participant at Dalberg‘s Innovating for Women’s safety brainstorming session in Mumbai.

The session brought in people from varied fields and he contributed specifically to the “Safer Public Spaces” group. He also presented the solution on behalf of his group to all the participants. The session was of prime importance because it addressed all facets of Women Safety and having diversity in all groups ensured a well-thought solution. Importantly, submitting all the solutions to Dalberg increases the chances of its potential implementation and dissemination.

Parvathy Sarat from the Data Analytics Team shares her experiences being a part of the team

“I’m sure every volunteer in our data team has a lot to speak about the work we’ve done. And what is even better, we love what what we do.

I’ve been involved in aggregating information on the various safe spots in cities, so that Safecity app users may identify safe areas/gatherings nearby in case of emergencies. I also worked on extraction and clustering of safety recommendations from our crime reports, specific to various locations. Knowing that these, in some way, may help someone in need & in abatement of crime is rewarding. How data can empower is what my Safecity experience taught me.”

My motivation to be a part of Safecity is…

“When I first read about Safecity and its work in 2017, I was most impressed by how crowdsourced sexual crime reports were being mined to build safer neighbourhoods. At the time I had switched from a Civil Engineering background to the data field, and was looking to see what I could do to contribute.

Needless to say I have learnt and grown a lot during my time here, working in teams and individually.

While seeing my work contribute to a bigger cause is gratifying in itself, the purpose of making our neighbourhoods a little safer, and our people a lot more aware makes the whole experience worth it.”

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 June, our tweetchat were centred around different issues of urban planning, designing and people’s lived experiences keeping with the theme of the Urban Thinkers Campus. Check out the storified tweetchats here- Sex and the City- Does the City have space for women’s bodies and sexuality?, Designing Safe and Sustainable Cities For and By Women, Gender, Urban Spaces and the right to Everyday Life, Urban Planning and Gender and How is your city affecting your health?

Petition to make Holi safer and harassment-free

Safecity is petitioning for safer practices during Holi and for preventive measures to curb sexual harassment during Holi. Do support the petition by signing and sharing widely.