Safecity Monthly Updates: October 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.
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.
Safecity at the launch of Vodafone Sakhi
Our Director & COO, Supreet K Singh was felicitated for her work towards empowering women in rural India exemplifying the spirit of #AbRukeinKyunat the launch of Vodaone Sakhi (a mobile app providing women with safety services) along with PV Sindhu, an Indian professional badminton player. You can read more about it here.
11 Oct– Women, Peace & Security panel discussion at Yale
2018 World Fellows ElsaMarie DSilva (our Founder), Fauziya Ali, Maj Dongyoun Cho and Lauren C Anderson, former FBI Executive were part of a panel discussion moderated by Prof. Inderpal Grewal on Thursday, October 11 in Yale. The panel discussion focused on women’s efforts in peace and security in different parts of the world and in different contexts.
Keynote speaker at ‘Crime and Fear in Public Spaces‘ conference in Stockholm
Our Director and COO, Supreet K Singh, was the key note speaker and represented Red Dot Foundation- Safecity at the ‘Crime & Fear in Public Spaces’- a conference on the individual’s right to safe public spaces at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden on 17 & 18th October.
The conference was about the patterns, challenges and action that need to be taken to address crime and fear in public spaces in national and international contexts. Supreet spoke about the individual’s right to safe public spaces and the work that we do at Safecity. She was also joined by Suzanne Lea, our Board Director, and Prof. Vania Ceccato of KTH University.
Designing Solutions with Communities
The Safecity Mobile app was launched last year and is available in Android and iOS in several languages – English, Hindi, Spanish, Malay Bahasa, Arabic and Swahili. This is part of the broader reporting platform to record and document experiences of sexual violence and harassment anonymously.
By geotagging each report/story, we are able to look at location-based trends and visualise the data in ways that can help us with information that increases situational awareness as well as identify preventive measures in local communities. We have used this crowdsourced data successfully in many partnerships to engage communities to have a dialogue on sexual violence, take a stand and provide support to the women and girls of the community and hold institutional stakeholders like the police, municipal authorities and transport authorities accountable in doing a better job.
On 20th October, we engaged Yale students in a design exercise to look at interactivity, user-friendliness and increasing visibility to make them socially pro-active as well as improve the app.
Safecity at the Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2018 by UNESCO
The theme this year was Media and Information Literate Cities: Voices, Powers, and Change Makers. Our Director and COO, Supreet K Singh, was in Lithuania and Latvia from 23-26th October for the UNESCO Global MIL Week representing Safecity and spoke about the ways in which we are using media and technology to provide a platform for many voices and stories of sexual abuse and violence. Her film #NirbhayaMai #AsifaMai moved the audience to tears and we were honoured to receive a standing ovation. ❤
Partnership with Sisterhood Alliance, Malaysia
Supreet K Singh, our Director and COO, discussing the way forward with our partners in Malaysia- Sisterhood Alliance, uniting to make cities safer for women.
At the mBillionth Awards
Red Dot Foundation (Safecity)’s film- Save the Boy Child- Save the Girls #BetaPadhao #BetiBachao on the Safecity mobile app was short-listed for the #mBillionth2018 Awards in Media & Entertainment category.
We had the honour to attend the awards as well as display our work and interact with people. You can read more about it here.
International Day of the Girl Child
On Thursday, 11th October, Vanshika Siya Deswal, our Youth Outreach Officer along with the newly recruited volunteers and Campus Ambassadors of Delhi team celebrated International Day of the Girl Child at Arts Faculty, University of Delhi.
The youth shared their personal stories, discussed how gender biases are still prevalent while bringing up children and the kind of opportunities that exist for women these days. The team then wrote amazing slogans #GirlShouldBe and discussed what can girls do if they are not stereotyped and if they are treated as equals in society.
You can check out the pictures here.
Naina Jha conducted a session for the girls of Rainbow Homes in Paṭna. There were 30 girls and 5 teachers and the theme was #GirlsShouldBe. Each girl was vocal in talking about what girls should be and their answers were promising of a brighter future for girls, not restricted to the home or kitchen. You can read more about it here.
Shaping New Realities- Podcast
Swedish Institute Alumni Network (Svenska institutet) has started a podcast- Shaping New Realities. In it’s first episode, they feature Safecity and how we have been using data to make cities safer.
Elsa Dsilva (our Founder & CEO), Supreet K Singh (our Director & COO), Ashwini Syed (Head of HR & Operations), Jessica Xalxo, Rahul Ranjan Srivastava and Vihang Jumle who have all contributed to Safecity in varying capacities share their thoughts in this podcast.
You can listen to it here.
Updates from Mumbai
Supreet K Singh conducted an awareness workshop in H.R. College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai for about 65 students. The students determinedly put forth their opinions and shared instances of facing gender stereotyping and harassment. You can read more about it here.
Updates from Patna
Naina Jha has been conducted awareness workshops on puberty & menstruation, sexual harassment, gender stereotypes and more in Patna, Bihar and has reached out to 360 girls studying in schools and colleges and their teachers as well. She conducted a workshop on Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (POSH) for the students of Standard 12 in collaboration with Gupshup – Ek Sarthak Samvaad.
You can read more about it here.
Updates from Delhi
In a workshop in a community in Delhi, creating awareness about child sexual abuse and the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO Act) it was heartening to see men taking the initiative, being vocal, thoughtful and sensitive in the discussion. It is definitely a sign of positive change. We have reached out to the youth group, men and women in the communities in Gauri Shankar Mandir and Indira Gandhi Enclave.
You can read more about it here.
Safecity at Yale
ElsaMarie DSilva presented our work at Safecity at the Good Society Seminar on Human Rights along with Joy Olivier and Syliva Aguilera as part of the Greenberg World Fellows program.
Amazing Grace- Elsa D’Silva’s live chat series on Facebook with contemporary wonder women
With Ms.Thynn Thynn Hliang, Yale World Fellow 2018 and former Country Director, Sierra Leone, Oxfam International. You can catch their conversation here.
With Ms. Sylvia Aguilera, a Human Rights Activist from Mexico and is now a Mediation specialist. You can catch their conversation here.
With Ms. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, founder of YAKIN Youth and Adult Survivors and Kin in Need. They also spoke about her book Survivors- Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse. You can catch their conversation here.
With Ms. Elpida Rouka, former Chief of Staff, Office of the Special Envoy for Syria. You can catch their conversation here.
With Ms. Joy Olivier, founder of Ikamva Youth in South Africa and an inspirational social entrepreneur. You can catch their conversation here.
Updates from our DATA Analytics Team
This month saw the data team do a lot of diverse projects. We ran the first public safety survey and devised a metric to determine the expectation of crime in Mumbai. We initiated a new survey on Workplace Safety and have made significant progress in studying our descriptions and reports. We began exploring the types of crime that are prominent in the different part of the city and we hope to present our findings as a report that would give the reader an insight into the distribution of crime. Seeking more utility of the mobile application, I also motivated a group of volunteers to audit localities and we now see the audits populate our crowd map on the mobile application.
–Vihang Jumle (Lead Data Analyst)
Sarthak Anand from the Data Analytics Team shares his experiences being a part of the team:
“I make my city a Safecity by addressing contemporary problems. Interning on the research team at IIITD for the past 6 months I have worked on Natural Language Processing (NLP) problems which have certain impact value. At Safecity, I worked on similar problems that involve some NLP with relatively high impact value.
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 [email protected] or [email protected] 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 September’s storified tweetchats here –Addressing the Journalism Gender Gap; Bringing Environmental News Front & Centre, Social Entrepreneurship- For and By Women, Mental Health and Women, Portrayal of Women in Indian Cinema and TV and its effects on Society and What’s Next: The Aftermath of #MeToo.
On 3 Oct Elsa D’Silva had a tweetchat with Eirliani Abdul Rahman, Author of Survivors- Breaking the Silence around Child Sexual Abuse.
#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?
- Every Friday at 9 pm IST/ 1130 am EST join us on Twitter @pinthecreep
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