Daan Utsav: Mapping Unsafe Places In India’s Cities
Bridging the data gap between official under-reported statistics on sexual violence and daily reality. By Supreet K Singh.
Opportunities to volunteer and effect change, this Daan Utsav.
This year Red Dot Foundation is pleased to participate in #DaanUtsav by mobilising volunteers to give their time to create safer places in their neighborhoods and safer cities.
Safecity is a platform to crowdsource stories on sexual violence. The aim is to bridge the data gap between official under-reported statistics and daily reality. By providing an anonymous platform for girls and women to report harassment and violence, patterns and trends can be understood and together with local stakeholders solutions could be found. The reporting platform consists of a web app, a mobile app in Android and iOS, a missed call facility in India. Since its launch on Dec. 26, 2012, 30,000+ reports of incidents of sexual and gender-based violence from around the country, Nigeria, Kenya, Nepal, Cameroon, Malaysia, South Africa, etc. have been mapped.
During DaanUtsav, in collaboration with Internshala and other partners, with a response of over 1,000 volunteers, the campaign aims to spread awareness of the Safecity platform in its endeavor to make both private and public spaces safe for everyone. Red Dot Foundation will conduct an online orientation program, and the volunteers will reach out to at least five people in their community/neighborhood to share the Safecity platform and introduce the Safecity app and capture their experiences and stories of harassment or get them to fill their experiences anonymously.
One could also host an event for employees on the topic of safety and experiences captured. Safety tips can be documented after speaking to people or auditing their neighborhood. This data could be useful in initiating a change or making their neighborhood safer. The volunteers in turn share their own feedback of their experience of working on the campaign.
Supreet K Singh is Director and CEO at Red Dot Foundation.
Views expressed are personal. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.