Women’s safety is a subject that is often discussed and debated across the country. With reports of crimes against women increasing by the day, and inadequate action from the law enforcement authorities, a Chennai-based NGO, AWARE, has taken the responsibility of finding out how safe the city is for women. The NGO has joined hands with a Delhi-based organisation Safetipin, which runs an app that allows users to check the safety of a location. The information is updated based on inputs provided by the users as well as volunteers on the safety of public places in a particular neighbourhood. AWARE launched the audit on June 16 in four zones in the city. Sandhiyan Thilagavathy, founder of AWARE said that his team of volunteers were inducted on how to conduct the safety audit using the ‘Safetipin app’ and spread awareness among residents about the same.
“We received good response from the residents in each zone. They shared their concerns about safety in their neighbourhood and assured us support in making the initiative a success."
He said a safety audit consists of a group of people walking in public spaces of their neighborhood (a street, a public square, a park, etc.) to identify the physical and social characteristics that make these places safe or unsafe. To conduct such audits, it is important to choose routes that are taken by women every day to go to work, drop their children to school; or a street or an avenue where people come to catch public transport.
Six-month project
He added that the audit is a six-month project and his team would be working in each zone for a month with volunteers as well as residents, schools and other welfare organisations.
“The volunteers will spread awareness about women’s safety among the residents and also teach them how to audit using the app. This will help us collect and analyse data from areas that are considered unsafe and pin it on the app,” he said. The app will determine the safety of a location based on parameters such as street lighting, road conditions, accessibility to transport and people movement.
After the audit, each location would be marked safe and unsafe on Google Maps based on the parameters. Sandhiyan said the pins are colour-coded, which will help the user to know how safe the location is.
The app will also offer alternative route suggestions.
Based on the findings, AWARE is planning to work with the government officials to ensure that the amenities that are lacking in each locality will be provided to improve safety. The team is conducting a safety audit in Anna Nagar, Shollinganallur, Tambaram and Thiruvanmiyur this Saturday and Sunday from 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. AWARE is inviting volunteers in around these areas to help with the audits.
Those interested in contributing to the audit can download the mobile app 'Safetipin' or WhatApp ‘SaferChennai’ to 8122241688 to register.
