Safetipin (www.safetipin.com) {owned by Active Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd.} is a map-based mobile application and online platform, which works to make communities and cities safer by providing safety-related information collected by users and night time photographs. At the core of the app is the Women’s Safety Audit. This helps us to understand the perception of safety in public spaces. A location is audited based on nine parameters - lighting, openness, walkpath, security, public transport, crowd, gender diversity, visibility, and feeling; using which a Safety Score is generated for that particular point. Our vision is to expand women’s and girls’ rights to the city and access to opportunities.

We have been working since 2013 and have data in over 40 cities in India and globally. Our donors include DFID, Ford Foundation, The Asia Foundation, Packard Foundation, UN Women, ADB and Cities Alliance. We work closely with NGO’s and other civil society groups, as well as universities.

We strongly believe in building an evidence base using data. Safetipin uses two methods for data collection on factors affecting women’s safety at night. The first method My Safetipin app, is used to collect crowd sourced user audit data. The data collected is available for individual users on the app which is free. Currently we have more than 100,000 downloads of the app. The Safetipin Nite app is used to capture photographs along with their location coordinates.

In addition, we do projects with UN, city governments and other city stakeholders to map cities on parameters of safety and provide recommendations for improvement. We are currently working with Delhi government as well as the Secretary of Women in Bogota to provide them data and inputs for creating gender friendly cities. Our data has been used by Delhi government to address dark spots in the city and to improve walkability in smaller cities like Karnal and Panchkula. In Bogota, our data was used to make bike tracks more gender friendly. In Hanoi, we have audited all the metro stations along a new metro line and in Port Moresby, our data has been used to redesign an important bus station. Over the past 6 years, we have done data collection in Nairobi, Manila, Hanoi, Port Moresby as well as more than 20 cities in India.

We have received several awards including the Dubai International Urban Best Practices Award, The Womanity Award and the Lotus Leadership Award.