How Safe And The City Is Pioneering New Ways To Keep Women Safe
#SafeStartsHere - a new campaign in partnership with three London boroughs | SAFE & THE CITY
Safe & The City is a fantastic personal safety navigation app, which routes, shares and rates your walks. Not only does it allow users to get to their desired destination, but it also sends you notifications while walking through any areas the police have flagged as historical streets for crimes.
I’ve been privileged to cover their work in this column before, but decided to dive deeper to learn more about their story.
Afdhel Aziz: Jillian, welcome. Please tell us about how your personal experience led to you creating Safe & the City?
Jillian Kowalchuk: Safe & the City started from a personal experience. As a newcomer to London, I was reliant on mobile navigation applications to get me around the city. However, the fastest route isn't always the safest. After following a Google Maps route through an alleyway, I ended up trapped by two men who threatened to sexually assault me. I managed to escape physically unharmed, but I couldn’t help but think about someone else following that same route, who may have the same or much worse experience. As a public health professional, I was trained to find patterns and ways to prevent harm, but these ‘near-miss experiences’ aren’t often reported or taken seriously. By providing a safer way to get from A to B, while being able to get help and report on your experiences, unlocks the ability for more people to be involved in the design of safer, more inclusive spaces. This was where the idea of Safe & the City was born.
Aziz: I’m sorry to hear what you went through and thank you for sharing your story. How does the product work, and what has been the response so far?
Jillian Kowalchuk, the Founder of Safe & the City
Kowalchuk: Safe & the City is a free mobile application available in all UK cities and Berlin, Germany. The app looks and feels similar to other navigation apps, but there are a few distinct features. Straight away, you’ll see your position on the map, a red SOS button to reach Emergency services and a ‘Report’ button. You can enter your destination and you’ll receive walking or public transit directions. As you take the journey, Safe & the City scans millions of data sources to inform you on whether you’re heading into a dangerous situation or a crime hotspot. We provide in-app notifications along your journey with safety tips to keep you aware and how to protect yourself. When you finish your journey, you can score it to help improve the safety of these spaces, such as street lighting. When you ‘Report’ an incident, like catcalling/commenting, it stays anonymous unless you choose to share it with friends. We keep the app free for people by working with organisations, such as the police, mobility operators, technology companies, local businesses and cities, to improve the safety of the people in their spaces.
Safely Navigate app
The response to Safe & the City’s app has been overwhelmingly positive. People generally are surprised an app like this hasn’t existed until now, especially focusing on addressing normalised forms of abuse in public spaces, such as street harassment. We’re constantly getting requests for our app to expand to more cities worldwide.
We recently launched our newest product for businesses, i3 Intelligence, as part of our Build Back Safer campaign. Our app’s core safety functionality and insights can now be integrated into other mobile applications, so you can keep people using your product informed and safe wherever they go. This campaign resonated with many people and businesses in how technology can enable safer experiences. We’re soon launching our next B2B product, which will help to visualise the millions of data points we process daily to offer organisations a better way to mitigate, plan and avoid risks.
Aziz: You said ' It feels like a lifetime sentence of abuse that makes me feel like I need to change my behaviour’ when really the burden should be on men to change theirs - and to influence other men too’?
Kowalchuk: Thank you Afdhel, I genuinely appreciate men who advocate for this important conversational shift. There is a great TEDx talk called ‘Violence against women-it’s a men’s issue. It’s not about misandry or saying all men are violent, but we need to recognise that the vast majority of violent crimes are caused by men. When we can focus our efforts on preventing men from being violent, not on women becoming victims, we will make step-change progress.
We receive tens of thousands of incident reports through Safe & the City and it isn’t something that only happens when you’re young or in one context, time of day or place. It’s happening all the time, in every type of space to all types of people you know. Fear of crime, harassment and abuse fundamentally changes how we experience the world. This was exemplified after the Sarah Everard tragedy in London. Sarah took reasonable precautions to keep safe while walking home, but she was still murdered and somehow many still questioned her behaviour. Many women came forward saying how they’ve constantly had to adjust their behaviours to keep safe. When we can recognise all signs of violence and the spectrum it exists on, we will be better versed with data-driven and tech-enabled solutions, like Safe & the City, to accelerate building safer, more inclusive spaces for everyone.
Aziz: Finally, this feels like a great platform for brands like Bumble, Tinder and Grindr to get behind for their users, are you open to brand partners?
Kowalchuk: Absolutely. Safe & the City is on a mission to become the world’s most responsible data insights provider to enable the design of smarter and safer cities. The more great brands we can work with to safeguard their users, whether on a date, meeting new people or while travelling to and from locations, the bigger their platforms can grow while making a societal impact. The more our technologies can reflect the spaces we feel safe in, the more time people will want to be there.
