A clarion call to women-centered brands and organizations to support innovation to address a pressing crisis besieging us today; safety of women in India.

1. SAFETY DATA
CHALLENGE
www.safetydata.in
innovation for women’s safety

2. SAFETY IS THE BIGGEST CRISIS
FACING WOMEN IN INDIA.

3. Women-centered brands
should support innovation
to address this crisis
WOMEN-CENTERED BRANDS
SHOULD SUPPORT INNOVATION
TO ADDRESS THIS CRISIS.

4. placeholder imageWomen walking at night in India.

5. placeholder imageA woman sits in a car at night.

6. // 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.

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

8. // SUB-OPTIMAL PROBLEM SOLVING
There 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.

9. // SYSTEMS THINKING IS NEEDED
Systems 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

10. SAFETY DATA
CHALLENGE

11. OPEN-INNOVATION CONTEST TO
IDENTIFY HOW BIG DATA
CAN ADDRESS THE
WOMEN’S SAFETY PROBLEM

12. 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

13. 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.
PILOTBLUEPRINT
CONTEST
LAUNCH
CONTEST
DESIGN
PROBLEM
STRUCTURING
// PROJECT APPROACH

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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*

18. Marching for safety in Delhi A women’s safety march

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

20. SAFETY DATA
CHALLENGE
www.safetydata.in
innovation for women’s safety