Empowering women to break their silence about sexual harassment and driving societal changes with data supported analytics

Elsa Marie DSilva

With 20 years experience as an executive within Indian airlines industry, including being part of Kingfisher Airlines start-up team, Elsa is no stranger to mobilizing forces and breaking down gender barriers. When the brutal and fatal sexual attack on a bus in Delhi shocked the world in 2012, Elsa and two other like-minded women from Swedish Institute Management program decided they have to do something about women’s right to public safety!

 

Elsa took part in SE Forum’s SE Outreach Accelerator in 2015.

Safecity

Safecity

Safecity was born to make the streets safer by raising awareness of sexual harassment and empowering women, whose voices which have traditionally been silenced by cultural fear and tedious formal procedure, to report sexual assaults they experience or witness easily and anonymously via internet channels and the telephone. The Safecity platform aggregates crowd-sourced data into hot spots, performs analytics and uses the location trends to engage local police and government to improve public safety. The data-supported approach has already made effective improvements in terms of police patrolling time and street lightings. Since 2012, Safecity has gathered 4,000 accounts from over 50 cities and run workshops for 1,200 people, some as young as nine years old. Safecity is one of 9 finalists from the Google’s Global Business Group challenge for inspiring use of technology.