Safecity Monthly Updates : November 2016

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.

Gold Stevie Award Winner

Exciting News! Elsa D’Silva, our Founder and CEO won a GOLD STEVIE® AWARD for Female Executive of the Year in the ‘Government or Non-Profit- 10 or Less Employees’ category.

The Stevie® Awards for Women in Business are the world’s pre-eminent business awards for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. 2016 Stevie winners were announced on November 18 in New York.

Railway Safety Audits 

Safecity conducted a Safety Audit at Dadar railway station on 20th November and at Mumbai CST Railway Station on 27th November.

The objective of our audits was to assess the railway stations from the angle of safety and existing infrastructure. We also undertook conversations with commuters of all genders at the stations to understand the occurrence of sexual harassment at these stations. We are building an understanding of the needs of people and infrastructure for safer public transport (railways) and look forward to your suggestions.

Our preliminary findings were that people are completely unaware of what constitutes sexual harassment and the method of filing an FIR which makes our work of creating awareness and collecting data even more difficult. The final report of the railway audits will be ready in a month.

Children’s Day 2016

Safecity and ActionIndia celebrated Children’s Day in Dakshinpuri, New Delhi, with the children and families of their community where they spread awareness about the importance of Bystander Intervention which is a growing need considering the number of cases of sexual harassment occurring in public spaces.

Bridging the gap between the community and police officials

For the past year Safecity and our partner ActionIndia have been raising awareness on Sexual violence and working with the community on solutions.

They took about 30 young girls and boys to the police station to meet the police in order to develop a better understanding of the legal processes and build trust in relationships.

Some of the objectives that we have achieved are that we have:
A) Got the police to increase vigilance in the community especially the hotspots. One example was at an abandoned cinema hall.

B) Got the local auto market which was blocking the main road to move back and free up space making it easier for women and girls to move about their daily routine.
C) Girls are taking a daily stand for their rights. They have information that helps them do that and feel more confident. For children’s day they wrote a newsletter with a letter to the PM and their own mann ki baat.

D) The local police are a regular stakeholder at their community meetings accepting recommendations and making suggestions for change.

Samabhav film festival

Safecity participated in a two day film festival Samabhav organised by MAVA on 26th and 27th Nov It was a brilliant festival that showcased handpicked movies that touched upon various issues pertaining to gender based violence across a whole spectrum of genders.

Safecity presented its work along with some other initiatives like Why Loiter, Yuva Maitri, TISS. It was a great occasion where young adults are eased into conversations that help them to think about critical issues like gender based violence.

Safecity at Global Leadership Experiences(GLE) Program- Presenting the Challenge

Safecity is one of the organisations that has impacted society and presented the challenge “How do you increase civic engagement in your city?” to the students participating in the GLE Program by Common Purpose.

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 Adya’s story on our blog here.

When we asked Adya about her experience interning with Safecity as part of the Communications team, this is what she had to say –

“I believe the majority of youngsters in the modern day take upon volunteer programs and internships as a requirement, for their resume and job applications. But at the end of the day, they take away a handful of teachings, which they had never expected to encounter in the first place.afecity is definitely a place, which gives the youth a change to express themselves and know more about the world they live in. Today, I can say that I would not be afraid to stand up for myself if the need were to arise.”

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 our Program and Outreach Manager in Delhi, Sumati Thusoo, who writes about her experience with Safecity since she joined and how she has been able to put all her academic learning to practice on the field and has gained even more insights which help her to work with women against sexual harassment here.

“Being a part of Safecity for the past five months, I have had so many wonderful opportunities from conducting workshops to presenting our work at various platforms to writing academic papers documenting our work. Safecity is an organization that functions on the feminist principles of non-hierarchy. The emphasis on emotion work is so intrinsic to feminist organisational philosophy. This means that the organization relates to the whole person and particularly to the roles fulfilled by us outside the organisation. Setting aside time to ensure that personal concerns could be shared is something that makes Safecity a truly safe space for all of us.”

SDG 1- No Poverty– A Gendered Perspective

For the entire month of November, Safecity made a case about the need to ensure the eradication of poverty and all its repercussion, especially for women and girls in every aspect. We discussed the conditions of women living in poverty and how they are more vulnerable to sexual harassment, the vast gap in wages between genders that still need to be addressed, the methods through which we can help women towards their empowerment and about the condition of women living in poverty who are in prison due to criminal accusations or conviction. Through numerous Tweetchats, expert curators and blogs, our focus was on UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 1 – ‘End Poverty in all its forms everywhere’.

Check out our comprehensive blog on all the discussions we conducted this month on SDG 16 here.

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.

Our curators this month conducted four TweetChats on the importance of eradicating poverty for all especially women since there are a majority of women suffering in poverty. The focus was on SDG 1 – No Poverty and different aspects related to it and the safety of women. Many of the chats led to solution seeking ways to improve the lives of women and girls.

Check out the storified tweetchats here- Women, Harassment & Poverty, Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Women- From Poverty to Empowerment and Women in Prison and Poverty.

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! Wish you a happy and safe Diwali!