Akshara

Description:

Akshara is working towards ending violence against women. Akshara has presence through social media platform called Harassmap-Mumbai and also an online petition that it has undertaken in collaboration with Change.org.

After the spate of sexual harassment of women, AKSHARA launched Harassmap-Mumbai. It is a socio techno tool using crowdsourcing to enable women to report their experiences and citizens to spot and report unsafe spaces. The idea is to get women to report and engage local groups and the police to take action. This is possible if people use their mobiles and internet connections. Facebook has been an effective medium for Akshara for mobilising people to use Harassmap. Harassmap not only keeps a tab on verbal attacks and eve-teasing but also on cyber bullying. Any citizen can visit www.akshara.crowdmap.com and submit a report by selecting the form and report the incident or mark an area as unsafe. The citizen can give a gist of what happened. There are various categories such as visual and verbal stalking, unsafe areas where they can click. There are other options such as the site of harassment, profile of the harasser, gender and age, name of the road, area, zone, etc. The website also features information about different forms of violence and provides