Sayfty - Women's safety, India

Project name: Sayfty - Women's safety and ending gender based violence

Project location: India and Global

Website: http://sayfty.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sayfty/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SayftyCom

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sayfty/

Project description:

Sayfty is an online platform that educates and empowers women and girls against all forms of gender based violence. We believe the underlying root cause of violence against women stems from gender inequality and rampant patriarchy.

Through our story telling, campaigns, workshops and online advocacy work we are constantly striving to advocate for girls and women’s safety by

• Change mindsets rooted in age-old practices and customs
• Teaching and instilling respect for all girls and women at an early age
• Inciting citizens to speak up for their rights and speak out against all forms of violence
• Challenging the system, institutions and citizens for zero-tolerance towards violence against women.

Our Mission:
Sayfty aims to give girls and women the confidence to speak up and report all forms of gender-based violence. Through our survivor stories, crowd-sourced information on reporting and personal safety, we are encouraging girls and women to actively take action against all form of violence and reduce the taboo around sexual violence.
 

Goal and purpose of the project:

Our Main Objective is to:
Create awareness on the issue of gender-based violence and encourage girls and women to break to smash the shame around sexual harassment and share their personal stories and experiences. We use the power of information-technology, social media and digital campaigns to speak up and speak out about women’s safety

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team:

Shaken by the horrific gang rape in Delhi in 2012 that caught the attention of the global news media, Dr. Shruti Kapoor founded Sayfty in June 2013 to educate and empower women and girls of India against violence. This online platform aims at not only creating awareness of laws and legal rights around the issue of violence against women, but also uses digital media, tech-for-good, self-defense workshops and storytelling for women’s safety.

When Dr. Kapoor moved to the USA to pursue higher education, she started to understand what life could look like when you are not constantly harassed in public transportation or “cat called” on the streets
When she came back to India, she didn’t want to be a silent bystander.

“Sayfty is a crowdsourced initiative because the problem affects everybody. The community needs to come together to find a joint solution.”
The top 3 practical learning points Shruti took away from the conversations, campaigns and information acquired through Sayfty are:

1. Violence against women is a global problem. What is needed is a shift of attitude and mindset. Engaging the community is very important. The government can only do so much, and unless we come together, the solution to the pandemic problem of gender violence is not possible.
2. Girls are always told to keep their voice low. We need to break away from patriarchal rules and norms, all the stereotypes we tend to normalize because this is what we hear all of our lives. Parent need to teach their children that they are strong and powerful and that they should respect each other.
3. Be a better bystander. We all need to reprogram ourselves and stop being silent.

Use of prize money:

The prize money will be used for capacity building and expanding our work to different cities in India. Providing more school and organizations with self-defense workshops and gender training. This in turn will encourage girls and women to report and speak out against gender based violence and engage men and boys to end violence against women.