 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific I 2006 |
| Article no.: | 9 | |
| Topic: | Digital inclusion: a ‘SafetyNET’ against violence | |
| Author: | Lizbeth Goodman | |
| Title: | President and Founder | |
| Organisation: | SAFEspaces.NET Ltd and SafetyNET Project | |
| PDF size: | 52KB |
About author
Lizbeth Goodman is the President and Founder of SAFEspaces.NET, Ltd. She is founder and Director of the SMARTlab Centre for Site Specific Media, Performing and Digital and was recently appointed Professor of Creative Industries and Technology Innovation at the Centre for Digital Media and co-developer of the new MAGIC Gamelab, at the Graduate School and Knowledge Dock of University of East London. A practice-based PhD Programme will soon be opening at the new SMARTlab. Dr Goodman also founded and directed the Institute for New Media Performance Research at the University of Surrey and the Gender and Multimedia Research Groups at the BBC Open University. Lizbeth Goodman is the author and editor of some 13 books, including a range of titles on women and theatre, the arts, representation and creativity and mediated cultures. She has also written and produced a wide range of multimedia programmes ranging from educational CD ROMs and video/media packs to live/telematic and webstream events. Dr Goodman has worked extensively for the BBC as a researcher, writer and presenter of Learning and Arts/Media Programmes. Her recent performances on stage have included assistive technology dance premieres at major world events including Siggraph 2004-5 and the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS Awards ceremonies in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005).
Article abstract
SafetyNET, a global non-profit cyber-café project, uses technology to help stop violence against women and children. Open to everyone, it quietly provides safe online communication with domestic violence specialists and support personnel. Its SafetyWEAR clothing and accessories incorporate safety and communication sensing capabilities with GPS, Bluetooth, microchip and smartcard technologies. Women in local shelters use local materials, fabrics and traditional skills to make fashion items, sold via the web, designed for the insertion of SafetyNET technology systems by those in need.
Full Article
In late November last year, from my hotel in Fes, Morocco – where I was co-convenor and keynote speaker at the International Anti-Violence Conference, a major breakthrough in this North African, partially “westernised” society – I simultaneously heard calls to prayer through the open window and a BBC World news report on TV. The BBC spoke of the first major government endorsed Report on Violence against Women, by Claudia Morena and others, released at a public gathering in Geneva, held concurrently with our colloquium in Fes. I took the news of the report with me to the summit group gathered around the light of a digital projector. I also wept for the women and children the statistics in the report portrayed, many now battered, some dead. At the time, I was considering the original theme for this article, “re-thinking digital inclusion in the home”. It struck me that the use of digital technologies in the home is highly relevant to the question of domestic violence. The European Commission has debated the arrival of new “domatics” or information technologies for domestic integration, and the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered many of the world’s best thinkers to debate the possibilities for digital inclusion. Nevertheless, beyond such debates, it remains difficult to discuss, debate or address the problem of domestic violence. Domestic violence, or DV, refers not only to physical abuse of women by men, but of a wider range of attackers and survivors that includes all the possible permutations of men, women, and children, and, as well, collective violence against individuals and groups. Critically, violence in the home, on the streets, in office buildings or public spaces is not only physically damaging, but also emotionally and psychologically. Violence is holistically damaging – it damages a person physically and emotionally, it damages the family and the society that accepts, hides or condones it – so it calls for a holistic solution. What is SafetyNET?mestic violence I founded an anti-domestic violence project back in 1997. Like the women in need of help that led to the project’s formation, the group remained nameless and hidden. It operated “under the radar”, in private spaces live and online, where the victims sought solace from a concerned listener, from someone who could bear silent witness to bruises and scarring and to the victim’s quiet show of stoic survival in the face of fear. SafetyNET is a global, non-profit cyber-café project that uses the power of new technologies to help stop violence against women and children. Whoever you are, wherever you live, somebody near you is crying out, perhaps silently, for help – and SafetyNET is listening. SafetyNET, part of a women’s studies programme, quietly links women and children to critical information about domestic violence through online access. Specialised e-learning centres allow participants to safely communicate with domestic violence specialists, volunteer attorneys, survivors and mentors in secure and moderated chat environments. The development of new technologies led to the creation of a digital bridge, called SafetyNET, that addresses an old problem in a new way. SafetyNET, through its www.safespaces.net site, offers participants easy, no cost, anonymous access to information and domestic violence advocates. SafetyNET has no borders live or online. It is inclusive, non-discriminatory, sensitive to all those who need it, of all ages, geographic locations, economic and ethnic groups, genders, sexual orientations, physical abilities and languages. The SafetyNET project encourages the active involvement of women, men and children. The SafetyNet project meets a real, identified, need. Through chat room discussions, and specialised e-learning programmes, women receive the help they need to stop abuse in their lives or in the lives of other women they know. For the past eight years in Morocco, in England and globally, we have quietly and discreetly answered SafetyNET calls. We have travelled to sites when invited to set up and initiate SafetyNET, and Listen-In centres using technology in new ways. Our dedicated IT team members work onsite with specialists who are recognised experts and interventionists in domestic abuse. Projects such as the Alibag Water Project help women to gain the space they need to set up shelters of their own. Attorney Aditi Vaidy’s site, Alibag, provides water for fields so women no longer need to walk miles for clean water. They can use the time they save to tend their newly irrigated fields, grow fruit and learn new skills to help them enter the knowledge economy. SafetyNET has developed prototypes, including two major lines of SafetyWEAR clothing and accessories that incorporate safety and communication sensing capabilities via GPS, Bluetooth, microchip and smartcard technologies. We hope to work in local shelters to enable women to use local materials, fabrics and traditional skills to make fashion items for sale via the web. They will also produce a range of locally made garments designed for the insertion of SafetyNET technology systems for those in need. This will help empower women by making them economically self-sufficient. The prestigious Siggraph Cyberfashion shows featured SafetyWEAR fashions for two years running. At the 2004 international computer interactive conference, our team was one of five groups invited to showcase its cyber fashion, and in 2005, we took pride of place amongst the teams having made major strides for fashion and women’s rights! Unveiled at Siggraph 2005, the new SafetyNET JET system prototype demonstrated low cost, high impact safety sensing systems that allow silent mobile access to maps and information on physical safe spaces, shelters, and centres equipped with technology for communication and advice. The programme is ready for replication. The goal is to set up a worldwide site, in collaboration with local NGOs and domestic violence experts, to provide customised SafetyNET services that take into account local legal issues and cultural sensitivities. SafetyNET has invitations to expand within the US and Europe, and for new sites in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, North and South Africa and rural communities in India. For eight years, we have developed and run this important project, touching the lives of so many, with no funding, but, now, to grow, and to maintain our current energy and vision, we need outside help. Our team is growing, we have vision and energy, but the available resources dictate the pace of our expansion. Women and children are being hurt throughout the world, even on streets near you. Right now, somebody nearby needs help. What you can do? The project developed, without a name, over a period of years: firstly, with a kick-start grant from the British Council to set up a backbone of endorsed cyber-cafés up and down the country of Morocco and do field research into what keeps women away from “new technologies” in public. The work has continued, in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. We travel whenever women seek new skills and technology to enter the e-commerce community. We repaired donated computers and return as needed to train new sets of moderators to repair them. We meet online in our moderated safeSpaces, where those in need can be seen, if they wish, or heard, to tell their stories, ask for help, and know that they are not alone. Domestic abuse Of all the appallingly high domestic abuse statistics, the most frightening are those that show that all the 1s and 0s of the Digital Age have not yet helped women understand that violence is not OK, not normal, not justified. SafetyNET found a home and took a name, as a not for profit organization in New York State, along with the right to accept donations (www.safespaces.net), only two years ago. Then, Lifetime TV gave us a big salute on the NASDAQ board in Times Square and on the Internet. We are most effective, though, unseen like the safety sensors inserted into garments made of local fabrics, in local styles, by local women that safely monitor them on-line and help keep them free of violence. Our programmes are ready for replication, but we need community support to fund the travel and training sessions that will enable women to assert their dignity, and take their places as equals of all the world’s peoples. In the home, on the streets, in the medinas, the sweat lodges, the public baths, the temples, the churches, and in classrooms all around the world, SafetyNET is listening. We have surveillance technologies, but currently choose not to use them. We prefer to use our ears, our hearts, and our brains to solve a world problem with a world answer. Join us. Help us hear the silent call of victims. Help us stop the violence. Help us respond. Stop the violence! Go to SafetyNET.
