How m ight we m ake low-income urban areas safer and m ore empowering for women and girl? Brave G irls Program M aría Luisa Pérez Guerrero, Ph.D. E-mail:
[email protected],
[email protected] http://www.uxanatomy.com
O bjective: Brave Girls Program aims to improve the social interaction skills of girls to increase their chances to detect, manage or even avoid unsafe situations. Participants: Coach, Parents, Boys and Girls and City Facilities. The proposal is to develop a program using design costumes and a internet+mobile system (table, phone) that will provide a training divided in five main modules: 1. Knowledge- The girls will see videos or animations of typical unsafe situations. This will help to create awareness and create background knowledge on the problem, also in learning about the possible dialogs and understanding the roles and behaviors of the people implied in unsafe situations. 2. Skills- Through a session group the coach should explain the main rolesattacker and victim- and will explain the expected and recommended behavior to detect, manage or even avoid unsafe situations. Using ad-hoc material like mascaras and costumes, the coach will encourage the recreation of a unsafe situation to give the opportunity to play the opposite roll (attacker) and thus create a position of power. The participants should be both boys and girls, as also boys needs to understand the Problem to avoid creating unsafe situations for the opposite sex. 3. Self-confidence- Through different exercises the coach will teach selfconfidence. The coach will select a series of personal exercises in a data base depending of the user profile (strengths and weaknesses). The exercises will be delivered each week in a mobile phone and the progress will be monitored also online.
System Architecture
M obile application Screen shot 4. Safe-net- Each participant will be member of a “Safe-net”. If the girl needs support in an unsafe case, she could ask for help through a mobile app, her location (GPS) will be exposed in the mobile of other “Safe-net” members. To asure the recognition of each member a lapel pin (Safe-net logo) that makes them visible in case of emergency. When a girl uses the subway, automatically the system will send her a report of the nearest location of others members (girls, boys or parents). The subway as other public facilities should be labeled with the “Safe-net” logo to expose their program participation.. 5. Parents training- The system will provide also learning material to the parents in order to be able to support the development of the program. The coach should create also training session for parents. Parents training is essential, in particular for the mothers, as they are the key educator of boys who could become a risk for girls and women in the adult age.