Safecity Monthly Updates – May 2022

Safecity is committed to creating safer communities for everyone. Our goal is to empower citizens by helping them understand the potential risks they could face in different neighbourhoods. We can do this by sharing our experiences or others anonymously and make these stories available for all. The platform serves law enforcement agencies with information on sexual harassment and other crimes occurring in public and private spaces. The platform’s data helps keep public spaces safe by enabling authorities to keep track of incidents and prevent sexual harassment in the future.

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World Justice Challenge 2022

We won the World Justice Challenge’s Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination Prize! This global competition was hosted by The World Justice Project to identify, recognize and promote good practices to advance the rule of law around the world. ElsaMarie Dsilva and Dr Andrea Adams represented the team at the ceremony at The Hague.

You can learn more about our project here.

 

SwedBio 2022 – Youth Led, Nature – Culture Living Labs in India

In collaboration with UN-Habitat Her City team, Swed-bio, Global Utmaning and Inhabit Place, Red Dot Foundation conducted public space assessments of 5 locations in Delhi/NCR through the Inhabit Place tool and the Safecity reporting platform. This project aimed to strengthen local capacities in these sites around the use of gender and age-sensitive smart technologies for urban planning and design. It also aimed to leverage expertise for developing high-quality and evidence-based learning and outcomes that support the implementation of SDGs and the New Urban Agenda locally in India. This assessment is a part of a 5-year project run by Swed-Bio.

 

Stand Up Against Street Harassment

Red Dot Foundation has partnered with L’Oreal Paris-India and Right To Be in their collective mission to raise awareness about street harassment in public places and sensitize and train communities (including youth, or people having influence in public places) on intervening in situations of street harassment.

The ‘Stand Up against Street Harassment’ program aims to drive awareness regarding street harassment with a call-to-action and to simultaneously discourage harassers, support victims, and encourage bystanders to intervene through the Bystander Intervention training program. It also aims to train people to safely respond when they witness or experience street harassment themselves. 

This dynamic training program will prepare communities to stand up with us against street harassment. It is an interactive experience and participants will learn the techniques of 5 D’s of intervention through participation.

 

Healing Trees Campaign

The global collaborative movement, Healing Trees, paid tribute to more than 5 million lives lost during the pandemic and promoted a collective healing process around the globe. By planting a tree in honour of the loved ones who left us during this health crisis, the movement spread a message of hope and rebirth.

Covid 19 has adversely affected millions of lives all over the world and in India also people saw tough times. During the past two years, many people have lost their near and dear ones, people lost jobs, families lost their only bread earner and they were pushed into poverty, and suicide rates increased too.

In these difficult times, Red Dot Foundation also contributed by providing relief to needy families by way of food, groceries, medicines, hospitalization, etc.

As a part of our goal to create resilient communities, we collaborated with the Healing Trees Organisation in their campaign as we loved the idea of opening up to Nature to help and inspire us to heal and recover from difficult situations.

We reached out to our volunteers and interns to take part in this campaign and we received 19 registrations from different parts of India. 

Here are some pictures of the participants who took part in the campaign.

Roundtables on LGBTQIA+ Inclusion

Red Dot Foundation in partnership with the Jimme Foundation and the QKnit Foundation organised 3 round table conversations with stakeholders and community members of the LGBTQIA+ community in India. We thank our partners The US Consulate General of Mumbai, Consulate General of Canada in Mumbai and Suzlon Foundation for hosting these dialogues. The following are some key insights from the roundtable conversations:

A. Suggestions for Educational Institutions

1. There should be counsellors who understand the issues of the queer community.
2. Teachers and staff in schools should go through a gender sensitization program.
3. Every school should have support groups for queer students.
4. There should be a strict anti-bullying policy that protects queer students.
5. Dress codes for students should be gender-neutral.
6. Parents should also go through a sensitization program.

B. Suggestions for Workplaces

1. Mandatory training on gender sensitization for everyone at the workplace.
2. Create medical policies that are inclusive of the needs of queer employees.
3. Integrate members of the queer community into the larger society through provisions of reservation in education and government job opportunities.
4. Build infrastructure keeping in mind the needs of the queer community. For example, recently the MCGM built Mumbai’s first toilet for transgender people.
5. Drive social impact awareness initiatives to reach a larger audience so as to repel stigma surrounding queer community and promote the inclusion of the queer community.
6. Develop training programs for the community in terms of talent and skill development and promoting business understanding.

We aim to have more of these dialogues and bring more diverse groups to the table to discuss matters of inclusivity in policy and action. We are also submitting a white paper to the HRC along with a toolkit on how to adapt and promote inclusivity at educational institutions and workplaces. We hope for a better future for everyone and strive to work towards building safe spaces for all.

 

Safe Maharashtra

The aim of the project is to create safe neighbourhoods and communities in Western India through collaboration with local partner NGOs. Red Dot Foundation is building capacity of 5 partner organisations and helping them incorporate the Safecity app in their programmes. The aim of these programmes is to end sexual and gender-based violence by creating campaigns for women, girls and youth, and to encourage them to report incidents of sexual harassment on the Safecity app. This anonymous data collected through the app is then used to engage their communities and relevant institutional stakeholders to find solutions for the creation of safer spaces and neighbourhoods.

This month, in their attempt to address the safety issues in their communities,  the partner NGOs organised community campaigns to engage communities and find community-driven solutions.

Community campaign by Swayam organisation – Visit to Police Station and Meeting other Authorities

One of our partner NGOs – Swayam, has done a phenomenal job working with the local Satara Police by explaining the usage and importance of the Safecity app and the dashboard to the Police Sub-Inspector. Swayam discussed the reports received from Satara district through the Safecity app and how this data could be helpful for the police to ensure the safety of women and children.

 

Capacity Building of partner organisation, KMAGVS, through Data Literacy Session

We conducted a data literacy workshop for KMAGVS NGO from Latur. In this workshop, we had 100 participants from across the city consisting of staff members, women and workers of the NGO. Our resource person, Vihang Jumle, conducted this informative workshop explaining the usage of Excel, how one can create reports on Word, and presentations via Powerpoint for better representation of their work. We also discussed formal and professional communication using technology.

My Digital Rights

Red Dot Foundation in partnership with the US Embassy, India and the US Consulate General, Hyderabad organised in-person cyber safety workshops in 4 States – Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Delhi and Odisha for women and girls between the age group of 18 to 21 years. The project kickstarted in October 2021 and ran till April 2022.  We focused on understanding gender, sex and sexuality, online gender-based violence, legal remedies and best practices to use social media. In order to facilitate a wider audience for engaging conversations around cyber safety, we also organised panel discussions and tweetchats on different topics addressing cyber safety of women, girls and gender minorities.

The first quarter was largely spent on researching the latest trends in cyber safety and usage of internet and social media by young girls. Two workshops were conducted with Protsahan NGO in Delhi along with a tweetchat organised during the 16 Days of Activism. 

During the second quarter, 10 workshops were facilitated with NGO Ignis Careers in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, 4 with Bhubaneshwar City Knowledge Innovation Cluster and 1 with NGO Soch in Odisha, and 2 with Teach for India (Delhi) and 1 with Aroh NGO in Delhi. We also organised two panel discussions, 1 with Rotary Club, Bhubaneswar virtually, and 1 with Indian School of Business, Hyderabad in person. 3  tweet chats were held on gender-based violence, one of which was led by the participants of the workshop. 

 

RDF Team Wellness Retreat

The RDF team completed a 3-day virtual retreat with Rukmini Iyer, Founder of Exult Solutions. As part of our wellness programme, we engaged in team-building and bonding activities where the workshops focussed on emotional fortification, building emotional resilience and how one can practice non-violent communication in their personal as well as professional lives. The team got a chance to relax, let their hair down and interact with their colleagues on a personal front.

 

SafeCircle

SafeCircle is a safe listening circle for survivors of violence and trauma to find support facilitated by our CEO Supreet K Singh. During COVID-19 we have witnessed increasing numbers of cases of intimate partner/ domestic violence and online harassment. Through these listening circles, survivors will find a community of support, share strategies to address and prevent the violence and offer solidarity to peers. Since May 2020 we have been providing psychosocial support to over 25 survivors.
Read on to learn more about SafeCircle here.

If you would like to attend a SafeCircle please visit here. Sessions are held every fourth Friday of the month from 3 pm – 5 pm IST.

 

Intern Talks – Anvi Lodha

“I got first-hand experience to learn about certain issues like safety and exploitation of women. On a personal front, it helped me hone my communication skills and encouraged me to do more for the marginalised sections of society.

Empowerment and safety is a right, and not a privilege and I want no one to be deprived of it, especially women!”

 

Key points to understand through data – May

Click here to see the Safecity Data Dashboards.

 

Safecity Reporting Platform

Safecity is a platform as a service product that powers communities, police and city government to prevent violence in public and private spaces. Our technology stack collects and analyses crowdsourced, anonymous reports of violent crime, identifying patterns and key insights. This data enables citizens, researchers and policymakers to create safer spaces by:

• Increasing awareness, transparency and public accountability
• Improving policy and tactical precision with data-led insights
• Optimising budgets to more effectively allocate resources

Get in touch if you want to be a Safecity partner.

Report an incident on Safecity Platform

Download Safecity App on iOS Devices

Download Safecity App on Android Devices

 

Upcoming Projects and Events

• 8 June – Join us at the Trust Law Awards in London. Register here.
• 9 June – Virtual panel of UN-Habitat – Empowering Women, Public Space Climate Change.
• 26-30 June – Join us at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in Katowice, Poland.
• Tweetchats every Friday at 9 pm IST on Twitter at @TheSafecityApp.

 

Ongoing Projects

• Queer Hifazat Project
• Safe Maharashtra in Mumbai, Pune and Satara
• Community Health Workers Trainings with HDFC Bank – Parivartan
• Community Health Workers Trainings with City of Stuttgart
• Mentoring on Personal Leadership with Young Girls and Women with Adventures of the Mind