Safe & The City, which was founded by Women in Transport member, Jillian Kowalchuk, aims to make it easier to report incidents of harassment and to support other organisations, such as the Metropolitan Police, to act on that data.
Safe & the City was set up two years ago, when Jillian had a frightening experience of a near sexual assault while walking home following a Google Maps route. She didn’t know how or where to report the incident, but was determined not to let it happen to others. So she created an app that helps users navigate cities using the safest route, not just the fastest.
It has since helped thousands of people get home safely, and the data and insights are helping charities and businesses tackle harassment and other unsafe behaviours.
However, it remains that 85 per cent of young women in the UK have experienced sexual harassment and up to 90 per cent of incidents on public transport go unreported.
A lack of data and insight makes intervention to reduce street and sexual harassment extremely difficult. According to Jillian, this has worsened during lockdown and she says that something has to change if increased harassment is not going to be part of the ‘new normal’.
In response, Safe & the City is launching a new campaign to drive reporting of sexual harassment and raise funds for tools that will assist charities and other organisations to act on reports and not let another lockdown increase rates of abuse and its tolerance.
The campaign - The Most Dangerous Word is ‘Just’ - centres on the fact that millions of incidents of harassment are minimised, not reported, as we tell ourselves, and others reinforce, that it was ‘just’ a comment or ‘just’ a joke .
Supported by 9 influencers – including Hollywood actresses, performers, athletes and successful entrepreneurs, the campaign video will be released shortly after launch and seeks to share real stories to reduce harmful minimisation, a key cause of the under-reporting of street and sexual harassment.
A Crowdfunder for the campaign aims to raise money for a suite of tools to simplify harassment data analysis, to identify hotspots and host insight from experts to make it easier for targeted interventions, enabling NGOs to work proactively to reduce sexual harassment, not just act after the fact.
Talking about the campaign, Jillian says “We are in unprecedented times where we have more opportunities to change things for the better. This includes addressing the personal safety of many who experience sexual and street harassment, many of which escalate into other crimes. This campaign comes at an important time to make a statement that the new normal will have to be better than where we left off..”
To find out more and to donate to the Crowdfunder click here or visit www.safeandthecity.com
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