Our Works

Towards our mission of creating safe and empowered space for girls and women, and all other vulnerable groups, we had a public engagement survey that was spanned out as 2 different important outcomes in ensuring safe spaces in the city of Chennai

We start with safety audits to be conducted by the community for the community. We called for zonal wise volunteers who are part of this safety audits who will be assessing their locality as a group at varied times and record their findings with Safetipin App. Audit focused on parameters such as lighting in the area; openness (how many directions one can look around); degree of visibility measures the number of eyes on the street through the windows and doors facing the road; number of people seen around; presence of private or police security in the locality; condition of the walk path denoting the easy walk of the pedestrians; accessibility of public transport; gender usage measures the presence of women and children among the crowd; and how one feels being physically present in the location.

Methodology

Community Safety Audits are conducted by local volunteers basically to ensure how safe and comfortable the women feel in using public spaces and to claim right to make it safer regardless of gender. In the first phase of survey with the college students and community volunteers gathered as a group conducted an audit of streets in Anna Nagar, Tambaram, Shollinganallur and Thiruvanmiyur (listed below). All the observation are recorded in the Safetipin App and in the absence of smart-phones, they used an instrument based on parameters set out by the app.

Thiruvanmiyur - Map Route

Volunteers started off their plan from Thiruvalluvar Park and collected data across mapped streets had a summarization discussion with public at Beach

Anna Nagar - Map Route

College Students from Women's Christian College were helpful in conducting the audit where we collected data and had a summarizing discussion at Anna Tower park

Tambaram - Map Route

Volunteers started off their plan from Tambaram Corporation Park and collected data across mapped streets had a summarization discussion at Temple

Shollinganallur - Map Route

Volunteers started off their plan from Devaraja Nagar Park and collected data across mapped streets had a summarization discussion at New Kumaran Nagar Park

Our Findings

• Policing: Need for security personnel, either private or police, patrolling in the area after 7 pm.

• Better sanitation conditions: Improving the sanitation conditions by clearing up the drainage water logging on the roads.

• Dangers: Presence of wine shop near the bus stop and a school is a hindrance to the safety of the women and children.

• Gender Usage: In most of the audited streets are somewhat gender diverse (few women and children are present and mostly men among the crowd)

• Transport: People live in the major audited streets can avail public transport only at the distance of five to ten minutes of walk

• Walk Path: Most of the audited streets in Thiruvanmiyur (56%) and Tambaram (75%) were good enough to walk on but not to run.

The main findings of this audit were:

• Visibility: In Tambaram, the streets had fewer than five overlooking points (68%). But the situation is quite different in Anna Nagar.

• Openness: The major audited streets were partly open both in Tambaram and Shollinganallur and anyone on those streets, but mostly open in Anna Nagar and Thiruvanmiyur

• Light: The audit carried out in all these 4 zones says that majority of the audited streets were having enough light for clear visibility.

• People: In both Anna Nagar and Thiruvanmiyur, there were people on most streets. There was no street deserted in Shollinganallur and very few number of streets in Tambaram.

• Feeling: The women who audited felt safe, but still feel the need to be cautious in Tambaram and Thiruvanmiyur

Recommendations

The recommendations shared by the audit respondents were:

• The platform shops are the hindrance for the pedestrians and permanent proper relocation of those vendors is very essential.

• There is a drainage water leakage and logging in many streets which needs to be taken care of. This problem is persistent in both monsoon and non-monsoon days.

• Throughout the streets of Tambaram, there is a problem of cows lying or standing the pathway on the roads. All the cows can be tied up in one common place. The presence of cows on the road also creates a sanitation hazard by adding up the cow dung on the road which is already logging with the drainage water.

• There are wine shops located near the bus stop and also near schools. The drunken men sitting close to the bus stop threaten the people who are waiting for the bus and anyone, especially woman, feels very insecure because of this. It is important to note that it is located on the main busy road. Obviously, the wine shop has to be removed by the corporation.

• Sanitation is the biggest challenge for the residents of Shollinganallur. There is more prevalence of problems such as drainage water logging, unclean road with garbages all around because of lack of enough garbage bins, cow dung all over etc. Sanitation and hygiene are the larger issues among the people live here.

• The women suggested CCTVs on the roads will be the solution to create a safer feeling for the women.

• In Tambaram, because of the functioning of industries making clay momentary items, the atmosphere is polluted with smoke.

• The whole area is mostly of lanes and the roads were not good enough during the rainy season.

• There are young people who regularly consume drug on the roadside in the adjacent street and it needs to be addressed. It is very unsafe to travel here on this road.