Working with women and men alone is insufficient since violence perpetuates because of a certain attitude of neglect from the system. While we build resilience and responsibilities in women and men to address sexual crimes, we also parallelly work with systemic structures like the Local Complaints Committees, One Stop Crisis Centres and Internal Committees to strengthen access for justice. Presently, we are also trying to influence the system to include gender in academic curricula; so that youth build their thinking of leadership and growth, with gender as a key lens.
Increased reporting of crime is a key way to stop crime too!
Box It facilitates a system that protects women, by placing complaint boxes in public spaces accessible to women. Durga has tied up with the Bangalore Bus Transport system and put up the Box-It boxes in prominent bus terminals, thereby bringing the complaint mechanism closer to women in public spaces.
Any citizen who feels responsible to understand and identify if a public space is accessible for women, can be a CAPS volunteer. So far, CAPS has been successfully done in 100 Parks, 50 Bus Stops, 50 Police Stations and several popular streets/spaces.
Durga aims at making the city safe for women and children by increasing access and opportunity to report crimes. Our initiative, BeTogetherBangalore is created to work closely with Police, Government, and civil society. It aims to increase the presence of women in public spaces and will be primarily engaged in making identified jurisdictions safe.
Pindrop is known for their well behaved and dedicated delivery agents who make sure that they deliver their assigned task on time. At Durga, we have collaborated with Pindrop to create safe spaces for everyone. It is part of our Active Bystander intervention where ordinary citizens have your back and aid people, especially women, in public spaces.
90% of women and girls feel unsafe or vulnerable in public transport. In order to make public spaces occupiable for women, we piloted the first of its kind panic alarms (Durga Alarms) in Bangalore’s buses and also took them to Delhi. The idea is to create a noise on sexual violence and get the attention of bystanders to intervene and address the issue immediately.
Voice Out identifies virtual spaces as public spaces where every netizen has a role to play in making it safe for the others. Today, we have our Voice out collective spread across India. Spaces become safe for women when more women are on it!