Safecity Monthly Updates : October 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.
Safecity at UN-Habitat III
Safecity organised an event at Habitat3 NewUrbanAgenda in Quito, Equador, where our Founder Elsa DSilva spoke on Crowdsourcing & Community Engagement for Sustainable & Safe Cities.
It was a rich discussion on sexual violence and the need to report, how crowdsourcing can make the issue more visible and give citizens the information needed to push for local change.
There were over 40 engaged participants from around the world either working on gender and/or street harassment but also agriculture, urban planning who want to use the model.
Elsa is also on the Advisory committee of The Anu & Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE, a $1 million global competition that challenges teams to leverage technology to empower communities with a transformative solution that ensures women’s safety.
Safecity at the first Feminist Conference in India
Supreet K Singh, our Director, represented Safecity at the Feminist Conference held on 17th October 2016 at NCPA Theatre, Mumbai.
A part of the panel on ‘Women in Public Spaces’ Supreet spoke about the way Safecity crowdsources stories of sexual harassment in public spaces and then transforms these stories into poetic Broken Silences which still convey the reports in an artistic format.
She also spoke about the awareness workshops for corporates, schools and colleges that educate people about what sexual harassment really is, thereby empowering them to make informed decisions about where they want to go and at what time and how they can fight for their rights.
With one of the examples from Sanjay Camp in Delhi, she explained how we facilitate communities through various forms of interventions to reclaim spaces and access them without fear of being sexually harassed. Sexual harassment is a societal issue and only when every single person in the community takes ownership of the problem, girl, boy, man or woman can a change truly take place, both in the way they think and act.
International Day of the Girl 2016
United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 to declare October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. The International Day of the Girl Child focuses attention on the need to address the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfillment of their human rights.
In collaboration with Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon, Safecity asked women and girls the numerous challenges they have faces, how they have overcome them and who are the women they admire. We had a roaring response in the form of posters, blogs, videos and testimonies. Here’s a compilation of all the posts and videos we received by our Social Media Intern Adya Singh.
We also hosted a Tweetchat commending #GirlPower. You can read the storified chat here.
SafeGoa Consultation
In a collaborative effort between Safecity and Bachchao Project, a consultation called SafeGoa was organised on 15th October, 2016 to collect and analyse data on sexual harassment in Goa as well as to spread awareness on the issues of sexual violence and encourage reporting by using low-tech methodologies like printed open maps. You can read more about our findings and discussions here.
Peace Tables
Safecity participated in #Women Seriously, a global campaign on Women, Peace and Security to mobilize hundreds of thousands of women and youth as change agents at different levels and different generations within countries and internationally.
We organised 15 Peace Tables in both Delhi and Mumbai as well as on Twitter through our weekly TweetChats discussing topics like gender roles and biases, awareness about sexual harassment, know your rights, the role of women in the UN and the inclusion of women in decision-making spaces. You can have a look at all the Peace Tables we organised here.
Suspending Judgements: Gender Roles and Biases
Challenges on working at ground level with communities
Students’ Rising- Reclaiming Public Spaces
Understanding Consent and Women’s Rights
MySafecity- Urmi Kothari
Supreet K Singh and Ashwini Syed conducted Safecity’s fifth #MySafecity chat with Urmi Kothari, the Founder of Kinetic Living in Twitter India’s #BlueRoom on 19th October followed by an intense but exhilarating workout session by the expert herself. You can watch the entire chat as well as the workout session here.
Awareness in the Right Direction
Safecity conducts numerous workshops for schools, colleges and corporates. We conduct workshops creating awareness about Child Sexual Abuse in schools for both parents and children, awareness about gender roles, sexual harassment and consent for college students and cover the laws in the Indian Penal Code and working of an organisation’s Internal Complaints Committee for corporates and their employees.
Feedback is an important process which helps us gauge whether our workshops are working in spreading awareness thereby empowering people with the knowledge to defend themselves and fight for their rights.
Safecity Emerging LeadersSafecity 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 Shaliya’s story on our blog here.
When we asked her experience being an Ambassador for Safecity, this is what she had to say –
“I want to work until the time sexual harassment is not a reality, it’s not an acceptance, and it’s not something that we have to succumb to. I won’t let it win or get to us. Working with Safecity allowed me to see things very differently, it gave me strength to work towards the change I often dreamt of, and it gave me the means to actually come forward and truly make spaces safer. I’ve seen the change in my neighborhood, my family and my friends and I am glad we don’t want to stop now.”
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, Salini Sharma, who writes about her journey, her experiences, her learnings, her winnings and all that she has come to call her own as she completes 2 years with Safecity here.
“Safecity changed my life and I knew it all along that it would. What makes this journey even more worth it is knowing it changed so many other lives too. It’s on this journey that my heart broke a billion times but every time it did, just as many reasons healed it. My two years wouldn’t be the same without all the amazing people I have worked with, in the communities who cared for me like family and it wouldn’t be the same without my team who give their best to all that we do!”
SDG 16- Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions– A Gendered Perspective
For the entire month of October, Safecity made a case about the need to ensure the implementation of peace and justice through strong and accountable institutions for all, especially for women and girls in every aspect. We discussed the need for institutions be to be inclusive of women giving them representation based on merit, the role of women in the UN, the many challenges that women face and the vital role that women play as peacebuilders. Through numerous Tweetchats, expert curators and blogs, our focus was on UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16 – ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions for All’.
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 including women in peace-building activities to ensure justice and accountability from every institution. The focus was on SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions and different aspects related to it and the safety of women. Safecity also hosted a TweetChat for International Day of the Girl where we spoke about the many challenges women have faced, endured and how they have overcome them without failing to account the progress that still needs to be made in different spheres.
Check out the storified tweetchats here- Women’s Role in Peace and Security, Girl Power- It can’t be ignored, Women, Trauma and Recovery, Women and the UN and Strengthening Institutions to Address Inequalities, Injustice and Violence.
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!
