Safe Starts Here Launch

We are thrilled to share the launch of the Safe Starts Here campaign in partnership with three London boroughs.

Many women and girls in the UK still don’t feel safe or free from sexual harassment and misogyny in public spaces. A UN Women UK survey showed that 97% of young women had been sexually harassed, with about 80% of them occurring in public spaces.

Safe & the City has been working to improve street harassment since the height of the #metoo movement in 2017. We have collected thousands of invaluable reports across the UK to draw critical insights into the patterns of these experiences in public spaces and how to reduce safety risks during everyday journeys. One example was our joint research report with UN Women UK supported London signing on as UN Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Programme in 2019.

As a social enterprise, we prioritise working alongside local partners, activists, businesses and police to prioritise crowdsourced intelligence to inform, act and prevent future incidents of street harassment from occurring. We’ve teamed up with Croydon, Sutton and Bromley to tackle sexual harassment and misogyny through research, community-driven intelligence and design. We want to better understand what is happening and build a picture that allows us to reduce fear, improve our communities and create safer places.

If you are a resident or visitor of these three London boroughs, you may notice a few more changes to Safe & the City's app. When reporting, people can opt-in to share the details you want the local authorities and police to know about a witnessed or direct experience of sexual harassment misogyny to improve their ability to enhance safeguarding responses. This form is not a way to report a crime or have police intervention, as all our reports remain anonymous. By connecting the dots to where, when and what is occurring to women and girls in these areas, we are creating an evidence base to build back safer, more inclusive streets for all!

If you do not identify as a woman or girl, you can still report what you see or experience directly through our app in the same way. Safe Starts Here is our call to action for the change to start with us, our communities, and our country.

For more ways to get involved in these areas and find out more, get in touch with one of our team— hello@safeandthecity.com.