Plan India Safer Cities
                     Plan India Safer Cities
• 80,000 households in Mangolpuri, Madanpur Khadar and Gautampuri in Delhi are 
witnesses to efforts to make the city safe for young women and give wings to 
their ambition. Young women here are building promising futures, reclaiming 
public spaces for themselves and shattering boundaries that routinely make their 
lives ‘safer’. Here, public school teachers advocate girls’ safety and sanitation 
needs so that they can continue higher education. In these communities, girls 
aspire to a career in sports and thrive through technical as well as vocational 
training. All this is the result of Plan India’s long-term gender transformation 
programme Safer Cities which focuses on the gap in programming and research 
pertaining to how adolescent girls experience public spaces differently than men.
• Safer Cities has put adolescent girls at the centre and challenges the perception 
of safety and fear of violence that define girls’ negotiation. It supports girls and 
boys in becoming active citizens by building capacities and creating opportunities 
for participation in city life. The programme is also being implemented in two 
wards of Jaipur.
• Safer Cities Key Outcomes
• Increased adolescent girls’ safety and access to public spaces
• Increased girls’ active and meaningful participation in urban development and 
governance
• Increased autonomous mobility in the city for adolescent girls
• While Safer Cities works to empower girls, it also engages boys and men in the 
communities as allies. Strengthening local youth clubs is pivotal in effectively 
gathering evidence and data for Plan’s advocacy work. Programme activities 
help the children and youth visualise alternatives where safe spaces exist for 
them to counter the ever-present fear of violence. The integrated community-
based approach uses innovative engagement modalities and gender 
transformative approaches. It also employs unique feedback and participatory 
research tools such as training curriculums, community scorecards and 
Information Education Communication (IEC) materials to involve parents and 
community leaders. Intergenerational dialogues help elders acknowledge the 
disparities and challenge the conventional understanding of safety. Dialogues 
were initiated within the community for addressing gender power relations 
and to challenge stereotypical social norms that perpetuate insecurity and 
exclusion of girls in cities.

• Making Safer Cities community-led puts the onus of assessing public 
spaces from a gender lens and ensuring the safety of girls back on the 
neighbourhood. Plan India forged strategic partnerships with the 
Department of Women and Child Development, Delhi Police, transport 
service providers, Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the 
National Institute of Urban Affairs. Through Plan’s advocacy, public 
transport in Delhi was studied to understand the needs of adolescent girls 
and to recommend specific changes. A consultation was also held on 
public budgets from the lens of women and girls and the resultant policy 
brief ‘Gender and Governance at the Grassroots: A Study of South Delhi 
Municipal Corporation’s 2018 Budgets’ was published. Safer Cities takes 
pride in girl-led negotiations with local representatives for gender-
sensitive budgeting for the programme area.
• Safer Cities represents a collaboration between Plan International, Women 
in Cities International and UN-HABITAT, thus benefitting from the distinct 
and impressive track record each organisation boasts from previous work 
done to address violence against women and girls.
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