AGENT OF
CHANGE
ELSAMARIE D'SILVA
IN
DISCUSSI
N
withElsaMarie
D’Silva,
MANAGING DIRECTOR &
COFOUNDER, SAFECITY
PERSPECTIVE BEHIND SAFECITY
Safecity was started immediately after the horrific rape
of Nirbhaya in Delhi in Dec 2012. We found that though
sexual violence was quite widespread, women and girls
didn’t really talk about it for several reasons - fear of
bringing shame to themselves and their families, fear of
dealing with the police and the lengthy judicial process
8
Up Till October 15, 2015
for justice. The official statistics do not reflect
the true nature and size of the problem
and this under reporting makes the issue in
many ways “invisible”. We wanted to bring
it out into the open and give women/girls
an opportunity to anonymously share their
experiences. In doing so they would know,
they were not alone and take the first step
towards seeking help.
The aim is to use this crowd sourced data
to find ways to make public spaces safer and
equally accessible to all, especially women
and children by identifying location based
trends and implementing neighbourhood
solutions.
We hope that individuals, communities and
other NGO’s would use this data to make
more informed choices about personal safety
and use it for community based solutions.
HOW FAR CAN APPS PROMOTE WOMEN SAFETY
Our web application serves to collect and disseminate
information based on personal experiences of sexual
violence in public spaces. This evidence based data set
is a new one that is being created and hopefully will