SAFETY DATACHALLENGE

www.safetydata.ininnovation for women’s safety

SAFETY IS THE BIGGEST CRISIS FACING WOMEN IN INDIA.

Women-centered brands should support innovation

to address this crisis

WOMEN-CENTERED BRANDS SHOULD SUPPORT INNOVATION

TO ADDRESS THIS CRISIS.

placeholder imageWomen walking at night in India.

placeholder imageA woman sits in a car at night.

// THE WOMEN’S SAFETY PROBLEM ...More than 50% of women in India experience harassment, compromised public safety, gender-based-violence (GBV), & trafficking.

PUBLIC SPACE SAFETY

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

WORKPLACE HARASSMENT

A very large proportion of Indian women suffer from varying degrees of violence and harassment in “public spaces” such as streets, parks, bus stops. This everyday problem severely affects the mobility of women outside their houses.

Factors that lead to this are poorly lit streets, poorly planned parks & neighborhood markets, bus stops, a lack of public toilets, and in general how public spaces are designed.

The Nirbhaya instance is a gruesome example of this.

According to the National Family Health Survey, about 39% of Indian women have been victims of some form of spousal violence: sexual, physical, or emotional. Non-spousal violence would increase this number even more.

This violence which affects women across socio-economic and rural-urban divides varies in intensity. For instance, physical violence ranges from women getting slapped by their husbands (34% reported) to attempted burnings (over 2% reported).

According to a survey recent research report, over % 17 of women face harassment at the workplace. A large majority of them do not report the perpetrators.

This issue cuts across economic divides and affects working in plush offices as well as those working as construction workers or domestic help.

TRAFFICKING

Tens of thousands of girls & women are trafficked every year in India and sold into either bonded labour, forced marriages, or prostitution.

These girls & women originate from different parts of India, though Eastern India dominates, and are either duped by “agents” or outrightly kidnapped.

Cumulatively, it is estimated that there are millions of trafficked girls & women in India.

// ... IS GETTING WORSEIn spite of recent attention, especially since 2012, and high-level debate & policy recommendations, the problem is getting worse.

// SUB-OPTIMAL PROBLEM SOLVINGThere are high-level structural errors in the way the women’s safety problem is being addressed.

REACTIONARY APPROACH

LACK OF LEARNING LOOPS

REDUNDANT EFFORTS

Thousands of people wanting to engage with the problem without an efficient framework leads to a scenario where we have 100s of safety apps on mobile phones most of which are rarely used or even effective.

Constantly monitoring progress of initiatives is needed to assess whether the “theory of change” being used is valid or needs to be modified.

Given the organizational expertise, financing structures, & coordination problems, most women’s safety initiatives run in silos and do not sufficiently invest in data-driven measurement and data-sharing outside organizational boundaries.

A large proportion of activities to address the crisis are reactionary and not strategic.

The Government, under pressure to respond, announces large INR 50 crore programs to install alarms on public transport without really evaluating smaller pilots on whether this will even be effective.

Citizens descend in their thousands to India Gate to “demand justice” without having a nuanced understanding of the broader women’s safety problem in India.

NO SHARED THEORY OF CHANGE

A “theory of change” is a set of hypotheses that describes why a certain problem exists and what high leverage mechanisms exist to address the problem.

Very few, if any organizations in India, have a comprehensive theory of change that covers all forms of women’s safety.

// SYSTEMS THINKING IS NEEDEDSystems thinking can help address the women’s safety problem much more effectively through three levers.

The problem is at a large enough scale and has diverse enough drivers that it would benefit greatly from emerging technologies such as Big Data / Analytics if they were applied innovatively to not only respond to crises but also to predict and prevent them.

There have been laudable efforts to define and institutionalize safety audit frameworks of places and approaches such using Big Data can go a long way in making current efforts much more effective.

Similarly, millions of people are involved in efforts to address violence against women - from police personnel to grassroots NGO workers - but often they operate with incomplete information and minimal training. Mobile phone based learning platforms can possibly make their work far more effective.

Any large social change problem has three categories of solutions. Advocacy, infrastructure (or hardware), & behavior (or software).

For instance, infrastructure solutions could include how urban planning for safe public places occurs. Behavioral solutions include awareness campaigns around gender, educational programs getting women to speak up or for men to understand how their actions might be contributing to the problem.

Innovation hubs and ecosystems that bring together diverse skills & disciplines to address the safety problem are missing.

Multidisciplinary innovation is needed to ensure that problems get addressed optimally.

Presently, even though the issue of women's safety attracts almost daily attention in the news, it doesn't lead to structured and concerted problem solving. Instead, a large proportion of well meaning organizations and individuals try and "hack away" at the problem in the best way they know how. Unfortunately, this approach tends to be greatly ineffective and inefficient.

A critically missing piece seems to be a Stakeholder-Value Chain Map of the Violence Against Women problem.

Without an ecosystem level map, synergies don't get identified neither do necessary complementary actions for the success of an initiative. 

STRUCTURING THE PROBLEM

MULTIDISCIPLINARY INNOVATION

USING DATA & INFORMATION

SAFETY DATACHALLENGE

OPEN-INNOVATION CONTEST TO IDENTIFY HOW BIG DATA

CAN ADDRESS THE WOMEN’S SAFETY PROBLEM

The Safety Data Challenge is an open-innovation contest to improve using Data & Information to address the women’s safety problem.

Boiled down to its essentials, it will seek ideas on how Big Data & Mobile Based Learning can be used to address women's safety. Our hypothesis is that many parts of the women’s safety problem and approaches such as Big Data lend themselves to crowdsourced innovation. The richness and quality of solutions which a well chosen set of participants can come up with, would be very difficult to replicate with a small set of predefined stakeholders.

The contest will play out over between September 2014 - December 2014 and ideas that emerge from it will be taken forward in either their original forms or by cherry-picking the best pieces of thinking that the contest unearths and creating effective technology solutions to address the women's safety crisis. 

We will be working closely with organizations in this space as well as the Government to scale solutions that come out from the SDC.

// THE SAFETY DATA CHALLENGE

The Safety Data Challenge has four distinct stages leading to a large scale pilot.

We will structure the women's safety problem into a framework that lends itself to participation by diverse people over the course of the contest. 

We will create a map of the problem using different categories such as the kind of safety problem, location, demographics, institutional boundaries etc.

An open innovation contest can be very effective if designed well.

This phase will involve crafting specific problem statements, defining solution constraints, creating or curating seed knowledge materials for the participants, planning contest logistics, setting up evaluation parameters, recruiting a board of supporters, creating communication materials. 

In this phase we will launch the contest and invite participation from institutions and individuals in India and outside.

A high-profile press conference will be used for the launch. Formal media partners will ensure that project continues to receive coverage over an extended period. A strategic campaign on Facebook will be kickstarted.

There will also be well-designed offline events such as Safety Brainstorms hosted across India.

In this Phase, the ideas that emerge from the contest will be evaluated on the basis of different criteria that the core group designs.

Winners will be announced and suitable prizes given.

More importantly, the best thinking from the contest will be combined to create blueprints for Big Data solutions that can address this crisis.

An innovation retreat that gets experts from across the world will be convened to create the blueprint.

Based on the blueprints developed, we will create a proposal for a pilot project around a Big Data / Learning Management platform that will greatly improved the effectiveness of Violence Against Women efforts.

A formal partnership with a State, City, or District will be forged to implement this pilot.

Post pilot, the solution will then be leveraged nationally through sustainable business and organizational models.

PILOTBLUEPRINTCONTEST LAUNCH

CONTEST DESIGN

PROBLEM STRUCTURING

// PROJECT APPROACH

The SDC will utilize online & offline activities effectively across different stages.

PROBLEM STRUCTURING

CONTEST DESIGN

CONTEST LAUNCH

BLUEPRINT PILOT

CONTEST WEBSITE

FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN

PRESS INTERACTION

OFFLINE HACKATHONS

GOVERNMENT ENGAGEMENT

// COMPONENTS

A two tier sponsorship framework that allows for preferred levels of participation & visibility.

TIER 1 SPONSORS

TIER 2 SPONSORS

LEAD SPONSOR(S)

AFFILIATE SPONSOR(S)

// SPONSORSHIP FRAMEWORK

The SDC lends itself extremely well to sponsorship by women-focused consumer brands.

CHALLENGE WEBSITE ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA FACEBOOK CAMPAIGN

PRESS CONFERENCE PRINT CAMPAIGN GOVERNMENT & RESEARCH

The SDC website will be the hub for the project and will publish rich content for a large global audience.

The contest will be launched through a high-profile press conference in Delhi with participation from leaders in Government, development sector, industry, & possibly the celebrity fraternity.

A print campaign will run in partnership with a national daily.

The SDC will offer partners engagement and branding opportunities with key stakeholders in the Indian Government and the global academic fraternity.

A paid Facebook campaign targeting over 2 million people will run through the course of the contest.

Compelling Facebook & Twitter engagement strategies will be implemented.

// BRANDING OPPORTUNITIES

The Safety Data Challenge is not a one-off intervention but represents a potentially longterm partnership opportunity to women centered brands.

DESCRIPTION 2014 2015 2016

SAFETY DATA CHALLENGE

Open-innovation challenge described in this document

SAFETY DATA LAB

A permanent innovation lab that creates new uses for data for women’s safety.

SAFETY DATA HELPDESK

A consulting service that helps different city governments & police departments implement better women’s safety strategies.

SAFETY DATA MEETUPS

Ongoing meetups, brainstorms, & hackathons with diverse sets of experts and people to add new datasets, features, and build more services.

* This is a tentative roadmap. Details will depend on several factors including the success of the initial Safety Data Challenge.

// BRAND ENGAGEMENT ROADMAP*

Marching for safety in Delhi A women’s safety march

CONTACT

NIRAT BHATNAGAR / NIRAT@WASHFORINDIA.ORG / +91 9899692572VENKY GOTETI / VENKY@AZRISOLUTIONS.COM / +91 9493868302

SAFETY DATACHALLENGE

www.safetydata.ininnovation for women’s safety