MEET OUR BEAT THE CLOCK CHANGE MAKERS

“We stand on the shoulders of giants,” reflects Alice, a former Plan International Australia youth activist. “There are so many incredible young leaders who have championed important causes, and I hope the next generation feels empowered to follow in their footsteps.”

In 2018, when Alice was 21 years old, she worked on the Free to Be campaign, which advocated for safe cities where girls and women wouldn’t be harassed and would be considered and consulted in their city’s design.

In partnership with CrowdSpot and Monash University’s XYX lab, Free to Be created a digital platform where girls and young women could share their lived experiences from five cities around the globe: Sydney, Delhi, Kampala, Lima and Madrid. On an interactive map, they could drop pins – happy or sad faces – on places they loved, ones they avoided or where they felt safe. It emboldened girls and young women to speak out about unsafe experiences and identify spaces that needed to be improved.

The launch of a global movement

“The campaign saw tens of thousands of young women worldwide share their experiences with street harassment", explains Alice. "Importantly, it also allowed us to build a bank of data to share with decision makers on where we feel unsafe in our cities. Free to Be’s impact internationally and on the people around me was extraordinary. It provided momentum to an existing women’s safety movement and allowed us to show the scale of the issue. It started conversations in the media, with the public and in decision-making circles. Often, I was invited into those circles to discuss the problem and offer solutions.”

Using this research and data, and after reflection and consultation with girls and young women in the five cities, Plan International produced the Unsafe in the City report, which was released in time for International Day of the Girl in 2018. Youth activists, including Alice, used the power of this report and its findings to advocate for change in the way urban spaces are designed and to make cities safer.

The youth activists held discussions with the Greater Sydney Commission and the New South Wales (NSW) state transport authorities, to name a few, and conducted Girls Safety Walks, taking stakeholders on immersive walks around Sydney. These walks gave decision makers, planners and local authorities a glimpse into the experiences of girls and young women in their city and were based on “hot spots” uncovered through the Free to Be data.

The results of this, along with continued and ongoing advocacy, have been remarkable.

Winning moves for gender equality

The biggest wins are within the NSW state government. The Greater Cities Commission created the Greater Sydney Women’s Safety Charter, which now has more than 100 signatories. The state government has also provided $30 million to the Safer Cities program to help improve the perception of safety in cities and towns, particularly for women, girls and gender-diverse people.

Today, Alice continues to work toward meaningful change for girls and women. She says the most significant learning from her time as a Plan International youth activist was that many decision makers genuinely support young people and can make all the difference in helping bring about change.

“I met and worked with some incredible senior bureaucrats and politicians. They were the most supportive people I met during the Free to Be campaign,” she recalls. “They helped give me and other youth activists a platform, encouraged us to speak, listened to us and provided tangible opportunities to turn our ideas into outcomes.”

Alice was so inspired that she decided to pursue a career in public service, where she continues to work with some of the bureaucrats she met when she was a youth activist: “They taught me to always assume the best in people and work toward a common goal.”