Know Our Team- Driving Change through Sustainable Partnerships

Know Our Team is a series that attempts to bring to you the stories of our team, share our experiences, why we do what we do and special moments that have left an indelible mark in each of our lives.

I started with Safety earlier last year as Digital Marketing and Strategic partnerships officer. Its been almost a year and I must say that the work has been really interesting and rewarding. Working with such pro-active, enthusiastic volunteers and such welcoming and supportive leadership is highly motivating and refreshing. Safecity not only provides me the platform to learn and contribute effectively towards social change but also gives me the satisfaction of contributing in an effective way to the best of abilities. The objective is not only to initiate and drive Social change but also to enable communities to continue in that direction ensuring holistic and sustainable development.

My work primarily involves working with the leadership team on various Marketing and Partnership initiatives. We have created multiple avenues to connect with individuals and communities at a global level. Here are some of the ways:

Case Studies

We have developed multiple case studies to highlight the work we have done globally either as an individual organization or in partnerships with other governing bodies and NGOs. Our work includes conducting workshops, training, audits across multiple rural areas educating communities about various nuances of sexual harassment and highlighting the need and importance of community participation and partnerships. This was one of the first items I started working on. I was fairly new and had limited overall knowledge, however, Elsa, Renita, Tania, and others consistently helped me with the required background and supported me while I was working on the case studies. Eventually, with the support of the team, I was able to create several case studies and design the Annual Report.

Social Media

We are active on all the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. This not only allows us to stay connected with the people but also gives us the opportunity to showcase how change can be driven using community partnerships.Our posts include articles by youth on multiple related topics such as Sexual harassment in public spaces, eve teasing, avenues to report such crimes, encouraging people to come forward and speak and to report incidences of such events. As a part of this, I started interacting with the volunteers. The high energy and enthusiasm coupled with the required knowledge and expertise helped me to get onboard faster and allowed me to contribute at the earliest.

Corporate partnerships

We work with several global corporates to drive change and create capabilities within their organizations and outside. Some of the corporates we work with include Maruti Suzuki, HPCL, Network 18 etc. Here, I primarily support Elsa and the leadership team to pitch to Corporates for different types of partnerships. This has been really interesting and the leadership has constantly supported my ideas, helped me to refine my thoughts through different perspectives.

Safecity App

The new app, which our technology team has created, allows people across the globe to monitor their areas and add reports, incidences of sexual harassment. This helps other community members to take precautions as and when going through the area. It, essentially, provides a platform to leverage crowdsourced community participation and to generate insights and help the community. Rahul and team have done a great job at it. My involvement here with the Technology team was around the UI functionality and the overall communication/presentation piece. The team always welcomed my suggestions and helped me understand the perspectives and reasons behind different pieces of design.

Overall, we have created several platforms to reach as many individuals as possible in order to drive change through community participation. We believe that we need every individual’s contribution to make the world a safer place to live for everyone. Elsa and Supreet have helped me a lot to shape and structure my thoughts and they have always been available on emails and calls resulting in a highly efficient working relationship even though we were almost always in different geographies. Special thanks to Renita and Tania for helping me to get onboard faster and for being extremely patient with all my queries and suggestions

Working with Safety has allowed me to leverage my free time and give back to society to the best of my abilities. I started working with Safety due to personal reasons, however, the learning opportunities and the global exposure have far surpassed my initial expectations. I feel really proud to be a member of such an organization. I had limited knowledge about sexual harassment when I joined and now after a year, I have a much more enhanced and informed perspective about this issue. I have much more knowledge about the issue and the knowledge about the right tools which can be used to fight for this cause. I would urge everyone to start contributing to the society in some form or the other as our society is our responsibility.

I would like to end it with one of my favorite quotes of Master Yoda (Star Wars) –“Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Connect with us?

Write toinfo@safecity.inwith feedback and queries and toaagarwal.ravi@gmail.comif you would like to connect with us or get involved. You can now download our app onAndroidandiOSsystems – let’s make spaces safer together!

This article was first published on Safecity.Ravi Agarwal, part of Safecity's writer's movement,Ravi Agarwalworks full-time as a Junior Engagement Manager with a global consulting firm and part-time with Safecity. He has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar. He likes to travel and watch movies and sitcoms in his free time.