Safecity Monthly Newsletter : February 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.

Partnership with Sisterhood Alliance

Safecity signed a partnership with Sisterhood Alliance in the presence of the Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, Malaysia during the event #MasSIVE by Magic Impact.

Women Writers Fest

On 24 Feb, Elsa D’Silva, our Founder was part of the Women Writers Fest by She The People – at Goethe Institute. She was part of an exciting panel discussing the topic ‘The Streets are ours: Women on gender and violence’ where they spoke about Non- fiction narratives, the importance of speaking up against perpetrators and reclaiming public spaces.

Apps that Address GBV WUF 8th Feb

The Founders of 3 apps- Safecity, Safetipin and Saahas that are addressing the issue of gender-based violence in their own ways joined together for a panel discussion at the 9th World Urban Forum.

Kalpana Vishwanath, Safetipin; Moderator – Kathryn Travers, Women in Cities International; ElsaMarie DSilva, Red Dot Foundation (Safecity); Kirthi Jayakumar, The Red Elephant Foundation (Saahas app)

Safecity WORKSHOPS

Aawaaz (Break the silence)

Our Delhi team conducted an awareness workshop in Sanjay Basti, near Timarpur from 4:30 pm -5:30 pm. The people in SanjayBasti, Delhi were extremely responsive to our awareness workshop and spoke to us about their issues. You can read more about it here.

Internship Fair at Hansraj College on 9th February, 2018

Safecity held an internship fair at Hansraj College, Delhi to engage with youth and volunteers and speak about our cause. Along with the internship fair, we conducted an awareness campaign-cum-survey as a run up to Valentine’s Day with regard to people’s views on consent.

Valentine’s Day

The Safecity team in Delhi led by Aarushee Shukla celebrated Valentine’s Day by conducting a survey in the Central Park in which we asked questions related to consent and touched upon the issue of marital rape.

Updates from Patna, Bihar

Naina Jha conducted an awareness workshop about Cyber Bullying for 45 students of Department of Social Work, Paṭna College. She explained different forms of bullying and the specific threat of cyber bullying which is emerging.

Kehkasha

Our Policy, Legal and UN Liaison Officer, Vandita Morarka, conducted a workshop for 40 young girls at Kehkasha, by The Gender Lab.

The workshop explored the idea of more girls and women stepping out and reclaiming public spaces along with am understanding of urban spaces in terms of infrastructural design and governmental policy. The girls also conducted a Safety Audit of the area around the school, assessing it for physical infrastructure, security provisions and other factors.

Pune participated in One Billion Rising

Safecity conducted a workshop on Safe touch and Unsafe touch for 52 girls and boys of grade 3 from Emmanuel Public School Lohegaon – Pune as part of One Billion Rising.

It was the first time most of them had heard about this topic. At the end of the session they drew pictures of all that they learnt in the workshop and promised to go back to their family and friends and share all that they learnt.

Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace workshop in Bangalore

On 23rd February, Supreet K Singh conducted POSH trainings for approximately 60 employees of G4S at their Bangalore hub. There were almost 85% women in the audience and the conversations were clearly around why girls are not allowed to rise to their full potential because of the fear of harassment at some stage or other.

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 Shaziya Shaikh’s story on our blog here.

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

“Safecity has helped me to grow, to be confident and speak my mind without the fear of being judged. It has helped me to break the stereotypes around being a girl and a Muslim girl. Throughout my time with Safecity, I have been provided with opportunities to have my opinion heard and shared my knowledge, I have been gently pushed forward to take up responsibilities and always supported.”

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

Know Our Team

Know Our Team is a new blog series that attempts to bring to you the stories of our team, share our experiences, why we do what we do and special moments that have left an indelible mark in each of our lives.

Read this month’s blog by Ravi Agarwal, the Junior Engagement Manager and his journey with us so far here.

“Working with Safecity has allowed me to leverage my free time and give back to society to the best of my abilities. I started working with Safety due to personal reasons, however, the learning opportunities and the global exposure have far surpassed my initial expectations. I feel really proud to be a member of such an organization. I had limited knowledge about sexual harassment when I joined and now after a year, I have a much more enhanced and informed perspective about this issue. I have much more knowledge about the issue and the knowledge about the right tools which can be used to fight for this cause. I would urge everyone to start contributing to the society in some form or the other as our society is our responsibility.”

We are looking for a Program and Outreach Officer for Delhi and Bangalore. Do send your CV to info@reddotfoundation.org

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 February, we had tweetchats covering varied topics from love and consent, to different aspects of social responsibility, to domestic abuse and the law to the impact that climate has on the lives of women. Check out the storified tweetchats here- Collective Social Responsibility, Love and the need to understand No., Domestic Violence is a Crime and Impact of Climate Change and Climate Action on Women’s Safety and Life.

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?

5th March– Feminist Rani- Looking Beyond #MeToo
8th March– Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace at Dosti House
10th March– Vital Voices Global Mentoring Walk
22nd March-Addressing sexual violence through tech & crowdsourced data CSU66.
10th April- Elsa D’Silva will be the key-note speaker at ACT-W, A Conference for Women in Tech
18 May– WE Rotary Session
Every Friday at 9 pm IST/ 1130 am EST join us on Twitter @pinthecreep