Safe & the City have been a the forefront of reducing harassment in London. It’s an often loveless task, but one we are glad they are undertaking. Of course, harassment isn’t just a London problem and they now want to go one step further and help end harassment in more cities worldwide by providing charities with a dashboard, rich in data and insights, which will enable them to create real impact and influence culture, behaviour and policy.
Why are they doing this?
Because 85% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public and 67% of girls have an incident before they reached the age of 14.* But 90% of sexual harassment and assault goes unreported.** This is partly because it’s not always easy to report. Partly because they think it won’t make a difference. But also because that society has conditioned us to minimise these experiences. So if someone calls us a sl*t, or a b*tch, or a wh*re, we tell ourselves (and our friends and family) it was ‘just’ a comment.
As part of their new campaign – ’The most dangerous word is ‘just’’, they are raising £15,000 to help charities take action in their local areas. Because we believe no experience of street harassment should be minimised – and everyone has a right to feel safe in their city.
With the £15,000, they will develop a tool to help charities act on their data. This will include a dashboard where they can view reported harassment in their area and get analytics on incidents (e.g. biggest local hotspots). The tool will also host education and insights from experts and information on the positive changes other local NGOs have made with our data. Ultimately, this tool will help charities develop targeted solutions, stop incidents, and lobby for wider policy change to protect the most vulnerable.
“To make changes we need to paint a picture of what street harassment looks like in our local areas. That’s where information from Safe & the City would be a gamechanger. To understand what people are experiencing, how often, where, which would allow us to make targeted interventions.”
– Emily Reddon, Women’s Equality Party Lambeth
With less than one week to go, the Safe & the City campaign has raised over 80% of their target. To read more, watch their campaign video and donate, please visit their Crowd funder page.
