By Anjali Sarker
What happens when you see the familiar neighbourhood through a lens of innovation? New ideas, solutions and opportunities start popping up from every corner! That’s exactly what happened when OpenIDEO threw this question to the world:
“How might we make low-income urban areas safer and more empowering for women and girls?”
Amplify is a series of ten innovation challenges over five years that identifies and supports innovative solutions to pressing development issues. Funded by DFID, Amplify launched its first challenge in 2014. The challenge engaged around 4000 participants from 42 countries, submitting nearly 600 ideas. The rich collaboration between NGOs, students, social entrepreneurs and designers turned the OpenIDEO platform into a gold mine of resources and fresh ideas for anyone who is interested about women’s safety in urban areas. After five phases of collective research and refinement, a few days ago Amplify announced 15 shortlisted ideas. At the conclusion of the challenge, a small number of ideas among these will receive funding and design support from IDEO.org.
Though BRAC did not participate in the challenge, many of BRAC programmes (not only GJD) can consider experimenting with some of the shortlisted ideas. Here are the most relevant ones for BRAC.
| Amplify idea | Description | Ideas for BRAC |
| A Pop-Up Learning Center in Mumbai’s Red-Light District: | Creating a safe space in Mumbai’s red-light district where girls learn life skills and become agents of social change | Similar pop-up events can be organized in the urban areas for different groups of people who are hard to bring together (i.e. street children, rickshaw pullers, street vendors, sex workers). Mobility and surprise are key factors to attract the urban crowd. |
| Redesigning the Bus Experience through Research | Creating a manual for increasing transportation safety, and two solution prototypes – women-only boarding doors and a redesigned bus stop. | Redesigning a few spaces within BRAC Center and/or BLCs for a specific purpose (i.e. staff engagement, creative work, open dialogue) |
| Kidogo: Child Care Franchises in Urban Slums | Helping women in Kenya launch their own in-home childcare business – providing a safe space for children in the community and steady employment for young mothers. | BRAC can train urban girls and help them to set up small childcare centers in their neighborhoods in a very frugal way. For such urban women entrepreneurs the market potential is extremely high and it will become a culturally acceptable profession too. |
| Women’s Rights Training for Men in Afghanistan: | Educating men about women’s rights, then select the most promising and interested students to mount a first-of-its-kind national campaign against gender-based violence across Afghanistan. | Interesting idea for GJD to try with MEJNIN ( Meyeder jonno nirapod nagorikotto, meaning safe citizenship for girls) project |
| Bicycles for Girls in Bangladesh | Providing school-aged girls in Bangladesh with safe, affordable transportation. The idea is to manufacture bicycles, sell them at a reduced price, and provide bicycle training for girls. | Interesting idea for ADP to try with girls’ clubs |
| Community Scorecards for Women’s Safety: | Bringing communities in Zimbabwe together – residents, service providers and local governments – to identify safety issues using a scorecard system and prioritize action. | BRAC can run similar crowdsourced initiatives to categorize urban neighborhoods not only from the aspect of safety, but also education, employment opportunities, water and sanitation facilities etc and use this to create awareness and assess the needs of a community. |
| For Women, by Women Taxis | Starting a “collaborative laboratory” in India, where organizations start up their own “by women for women” taxi companies employing low-income women | To ensure safe transportation for women BRAC can train some drivers and put special stickers on their vehicles that will allow people to identify “women-friendly” transports |
| Taking Over Unsafe Areas with “Talk to Me” Events | Organizing a series of events that encourage random, one-on-one conversations between strangers in unsafe areas, and a toolkit for anyone wanting to organize a similar event in their community. | BRAC can use this strategy to engage urban youth about different issues and empower them to be changemakers within their communities |
| Life Skills Camp for Girls During School Holiday Breaks | Arranging a series of structured life-skills camps during school holiday breaks in Uganda that help girls avoid exploitation, build self-confidence, and explore their dreams for the future. | Interesting idea for ADP to try during summer and winter holidays when there is hardly any school activity going on |
While the next challenge topic is yet to be announced, it will be interesting to keep an eye on such opportunities and to think about how we can make the best use of them.
Anjali Sarker is an Officer with the BRAC Social Innovation Lab.
