In Egypt, individuals are developing a HarassMap to allow women to report harassers via SMS messaging. It will map the location of the occurrence and help track where harassment is occurring and its frequency.
My good friends at HollaBackNYC and RightRides (who also are the lead coordinators for New Yorkers for Safe Transit) are taking this idea new places. This is their plan:
“We want to create an online map where women can ‘Hollaback!’ directly from their cell phones. Quick, 140 character stories can be submitted through three easy portals: a) text it, b) tweet it, and c) submit it through a ‘Hollaback’ mobile phone app. Once submitted, harassment and assault data will be mapped and later analyzed in an annual ‘State of Our Streets’ report which will be sent to the police, public officials, and the media. Automatic email alerts noting real-time harassment will also be available. Local citizens and policy makers can sign up for alerts on incidences in their own communities, or review our HARASSmap to see harassment hot-spots. Once we launch in New York City, we want to take it worldwide.”
As you may imagine, implementing this project takes money. They’ve applied for funding and they now need YOUR HELP to vote for their project!
For almost a year now I’ve been advocating (mostly silently though – lol) for a system that allows women to easily report the harassment and its location so I am thrilled to see them working to make it a reality. There are a lot of deterrents to reporting harassers now (including the fact that in most places you can only report people who are threatening or touching you) and it’s making the pervasiveness of the problem of gender-based street harassment largely invisible to mainstream society and to policy and lawmakers. This tool could change everything and make it easier to report harassers and it also could show us where there are the most harassers so we can target those areas to end it.
Please go vote for the mapping/reporting tool – it’s really cool and has the potential to be a gamechanger in the fight against street harassment!!
Please also spread the word to your networks. Cut and paste this to your facebook, twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn pages:
Vote for Hollaback 2.0 http://bit.ly/14Egc2 then repost to end street harassment!
