As the city police prepare to set up a police aid-post at Technopark, aimed primarily at ensuring the safety of women employees of information technology firms there, a bunch of young Keralites, mostly living outside the State, are also preparing to celebrate.
The credit, at least part of it, for the aid-post goes to the efforts of this group, through online and social network campaigns and memoranda to the State government, the latest being yet another petition submitted to Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala here on Thursday.
The group involves techies, located in different countries and some in the city, who call themselves global activists fighting local problems with the motto “Back to the Roots!”
Their sloganTeam IAK, a title stemming from their slogan ‘got Inspired, now Act, be Kind,’ comprises Visakh Cherian, Jithin Jerald and Vivek John, based in the United States; Hari Nair, Anjana Thomas, Sudhish Radhakrishnan and Renjith Ramachandran in Thiruvananthapuram; Vinod Rajan in Kochi; Gopi Nair in London; Sreeram Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Aju George in Singapore; and Hari Muraleedharan in Kollam.
“All of us are in one way or the other linked to Thiruvananthapuram. So we first decided to address the most pressing problem that the city is facing now— stray dogs. This attracted more friends from across the globe eventually culminating in IAK,” says Anjana Thomas.
“We will start with conceptualisation, ideation, solution and then implementation. We are working with NGOs and voluntary organisations and will facilitate an environment for collaboration with civic bodies to implement a solution,” says Gopi, adding that the groundwork to help the City Corporation address the stray dog menace was in progress.
Seeking ideasIAK also ran an online Facebook contest for 24 hours on ‘Keralam Nirbhayam Surakshitham’ to crowd-source ideas for a safer and secure Kerala. About 80 ideas were garnered globally. After filtering through Skype conference calls, Facebook chats and through email conversations, the top three ideas were selected and will be submitted to the State government shortly.
The ideas are ‘Surakshavaani,’ a community alert system to source immediate help locally; ‘Sannadha Sevaka Police,’ based on successful initiatives like the Metropolitan Police Volunteers Programme in London; and ‘Raksha Button,’ a single button on mobile phones assigned to call for help in an emergency and in the form of an app for smart-phones.
Amidst these, the assurance from the government for the aid-post has come as the first feather in IAK’s cap, they say.
