U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma and Canadian High Commissioner to India Nadir Patel on Thursday inaugurated the “Campus Ambassador Programme: Making Delhi City Safer”.
The initiative aims to empower the youth to play an active role in developing and planning safer cities and hopes encourage them to use a newly-developed app, SafetiPin, to collect safety-related data and report on violations or issues around the city.
SafetiPin is a United Nations-supported tool to enable development of safer cities through collection of data, crowd-sourcing, information sharing and engaging people to make the city a safer place. Users will be able to check the safety score of an area using the map-based app, which uses nine parameters to come up with the score.
The app also acts as GPS-enabled tracker, allowing users to switch on the “track me” device if they are travelling in an area they feel comfortable in and people on the user’s list will be able to track them till they find their way home.
Kalpana Viswanath, the co-founder of SafetiPin, said the app believes in using technology to make cities safer and more inclusive for women. “The app provides critical information that helps people make safer decisions while moving around a city and alerts you if you are in an unsafe area,” she added.
The initiative is part of the Frame Her Right campaign, an initiative inspired by Half the Sky Movement, which was launched in 2014 as part of a USAID-funded public-private partnership seeking to challenge harmful gender norms and behaviours. Coinciding with International Women’s Day celebrations, PVR Nest has tied up with the initiative to screen the campaign film at select theatres for 90 days.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Verma said the launch of the Campus Ambassador Programme was both timely and necessary as India has the world’s largest youth population. He felt that globalisation, technological advances and spread of social networking offer new opportunities for the youth to connect and become more active participants in finding solutions to the world’s toughest development challenges. The launch was followed by a panel discussion, in which actor Kalki Koechlin participated.
Stating she was glad that society was consciously moving in the right direction towards women empowerment, Ms. Koechlin she was excited about the fact that the programme had so many different stakeholders who had joined together to contribute for a significant cause.
Speaking about PVR’s role in the initiative, Ajay Bijli, the CMD of PVR Ltd., said since the ultimate crusaders of this women’s safety programme are our youngsters, PVR will connect with them through various films and student-focused content.
