Safecity Safety Champion – Ananya Pramanik

In our country where Delhi is considered the most dangerous city for women, do you think that just relying on government policies is the only solution to stay safe? We all, whether boys or girls have been exposed to this vulnerability. The vultures are many and you yourself must be alert every time, whether going to work, school or even a nearby park.

Recently I volunteered for Safecity (Red Dot Foundation). This NGO works for people via the Safecity app which is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. Safecity aims to make cities safer by encouraging equal access to public spaces for everyone, especially women, using crowdsourced data and technology. I had the opportunity to work with their program where I collected stories of all kinds of sexual harassment in public spaces.

The identities of the victims were anonymous which also provided them a sense of safety. While interacting with them I felt how much they have faced growing up with those memories. It is difficult to share the feelings of times when you felt the most vulnerable. Also, it made me happy to observe that some of them stood up against the indecent activities and called out their harasser or reported it to the police, but not all have the guts to do so as many of us are embarrassed by these situations and want to forget it as a nightmare. But this app will be a boon as you can now easily identify how much your area of travel is prone to those vultures who just feel that it is their right to violate yours.

I would recommend each person reading this install the app and share any of your experiences of harassment too. It would help other fellow members and perhaps they will not have to face the same incident as you.