PROJECT „SAFE“ SUCCESSFULY IMPLEMENTED
The Center for Girls successfully implemented the project “SAFE: Empowering girls and women to feel safer in public places in Nis”, which was supported by UN Women. 64 workshops were held with 244 girls/women in 10 secondary schools, at 4 faculties and with one mixed group aged 24 to 30.
The workshops were held at the “Svetozar Marković” Gymnasium, the First Niš Gymnasium “Stevan Sremac”, the “Bora Stanković” Gymnasium, the “Nikola Tesla” Electrical and Technical School, the “Neimar” Construction and Technical School, the Law and Business School, the Traffic and Technical School “12. February”, to the School of Commerce, the School of Fashion and Beauty and the School of Economics, as well as at the Faculty of Occupational Safety, the Faculty of Philosophy, the Faculty of Electronics and the Faculty of Electronics.
An anonymous survey was conducted with 241 girls about safety in public places in Nis. The survey showed that as many as 51.9% of respondents feel moderately safe in public places in Niš, and that only 6.6% of them feel completely safe. When asked in which public places the respondents do not feel safe, as many as 74.7% of the answers included the option of streets and passages, 51.9% of bus stops and public transport, 49% of quays, and 47.3% of the option of bridges and overpasses. Of the specific locations, the respondents singled out as the most unsafe: Tvrđava (52.7%), Nišavski quay (47.7%) and the bus station (44.8%), and then, a slightly smaller percentage of responses included the following places : railway station (23.7%) and underground passage (23.2%), Chair Park (19.5%). Of the measures that could be implemented in order to increase the level of security in public places in Nis, the most frequently chosen answer was that citizens should be made aware that they should react to violence (79.3%), and others the most frequently chosen answer was better lighting in public places (73%). A large percentage of responses also referred to learning self-defense techniques (61.8%), and these responses were followed by an increase in police patrols (53.9%).
Based on the selected locations, recommendations for increasing safety in public places and an interactive Google Maps map of unsafe locations in the city were created. As the survey was conducted in high schools and colleges that are mostly in the territory of the municipality of Mediana, many locations that are outside that territory were not recorded during the survey, and therefore not on the map, which does not mean that they are/are not safe, but that for them there was not enough data.
Link to interactive map:
The Center for Girls contacted 5 municipalities of Nis, three of which Recommendations and an interactive map of (un)safe locations, which were formed by analyzing the survey, were presented to the city municipalities of Medijana, Pantelej and Crveni Krst and the Office for Local Economic Development. In the City Hall, at the conference on the “Safe Woman, Safe Path” project, which was conducted by the city, the survey, recommendations and map that we made for our project were presented.
A media conference was held in the Media and Reform Center on the occasion of the successful completion of the project, where the results of the project, as well as a brochure, were presented.
Photo: Marta S.
