Hyderabad: Good response to Safety Clubs drive

Hyderabad: With an aim to provide safe environment for girls in their colleges and localities, the Telangana State Women Safety wing along with the NGOs 'Save the Children' and 'Lead Life' has taken up an initiative to launch 'Safety Clubs' in all the colleges of the state.neighbourhood

The women safety club is a volunteer programme started in five colleges in the city on February 11.

Speaking to THI, Swati Lakra, IGP (Law and Order) and in-charge of Women Safety Wing, said, "The main aim of this programme is to ensure that women and the girls are safe not only within their educational institutions but also on their way from educational institutions to home and vice versa. It is a need for every college to have such club. There will be equal participation of both boys and girls in the club." She added that thrust is on enlisting more boys for the programme, so that they can later sensitise the youth about gender diversity and respect for other gender etc.

On February 29, there will be a meeting with all the college principals to launch Safety Clubs. There will also be an annual action plan which goes with the academic year (June- March). Each month there will be two sets of activities.

As a pilot project, five colleges have been selected to run Safety Clubs. NGO representatives are training the team members on the activities to be taken and also necessary skills training to achieve the objectives of the programme. More than 200 boys and girls enrolled for membership in the five clubs. Once training is over, the clubs will be made operational. Annual plans will be chalked out for these clubs at the start of the academic year.

A crucial role of the club members is not only to impress upon the boys of the college to respect the girls, but also to explore ways to ensure safe commute for the girls to and from homes. They will come into picture should any girl need support of either police, legal, psychological or medical support. They act as bridge between the needy and the free service providers.

Vikas Gora, Deputy Director (South), Save the Children, said, "At the end of the day, for any crime that happens, one cannot always blame the police. Our aim behind this initiative is to make girls and women aware of whom to talk to when they face any kind of difficulties. The clubs are also going to encourage more boys to participate so that they can understand and do something as part of their social responsibility."

Ajay Singh, founder of Lead Life Foundation, said, "The Safety Clubs will talk about the challenges that women face in colleges and outside to make them aware about the dark places. Through this, the volunteers will reach out to their own peers, families and friends."

Colleges that have Safety Clubs

• Swami Vivekananda Institute of Technology - Secunderabad,

• Badruka College of Commerce and Arts – Kachiguda,

• Aurora's Degree and PG College- Chikkadapally,

• Jagruti degree and PG College- Narayanaguda,

• Sreyas Institute of Engineering and Technology –Nagole,

• Indira Priyadarshini Government Degree College for Women- Nampally