The Citizen Action Lab for Safe and Inclusive Cities was organized by Red Dot Foundation on 10th and 11th September 2020. It aimed to identify already existing indicators for safe and inclusive cities while bringing attention to organizations and leaders working on such efforts; crowd source ways to make cities more inclusive for citizens on a collaborative web app and invite citizens to drive change in their communities by drafting, endorsing and implementing these indicators.
Various organizations such as NAB India, Safetipin, Plan International, NIUA, and The Jimme Foundation attended the lab. The main themes were making cities safer and more inclusive for women, the youth, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community.
On day 1, after 4 of the experts presented the situation for safe cities (Kalpana Viswanath of Safetipin for women friendly cities, Harish Iyer of The Jimme Foundation for LGBTQ+ friendly cities, Harish Kotian of NAB India for disabled friendly cities, and Yllaylee Das of Plan International for youth friendly cities), all participants were divided into breakout rooms focusing on each theme. Overall there were around 85 people in the call and everyone was allowed to choose the breakout room topic they wished to be part of.
Rising Flame’s senior programmes consultant, Srinidhi Raghavan was invited as a facilitator to give insight into making cities more inclusive for disabled people. She facilitated the discussion in the breakout on the importance of universal design while building and designing our cities. Through the discussion among all participants in the breakout room, the absence of audio signages, proper footpaths; and arrangements for blind people to understand that traffic has stopped and independent mobility was discussed. The important ways in which digital accessibility facilitates independent mobility in a city was also raised by Srinidhi.
