Project Name: Little Sisters
Organisation: SNEHA
Project Location & Coverage Area: Mumbai, Maharashtra
Project URL: www.snehamumbai.org/index.aspx
Area of intervention: Women safety & child protection

Violence against women is pervasive in India and much of it – domestic violence, dowry deaths, acid attacks, honour killings, rape, abduction and cruelty – is at the hands of family members. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that an Indian woman is most unsafe in her marital home: 43.6 per cent of all crimes against women are by husbands and relatives.
Mumbai based organization SNEHA (Society for Nutrition Education and Health Action) has launched Little Sisters project to help women to tackle the social issue of domestic violence with mobile phone technology. Funded by the UN development programme, the project trained 160 local women called Sangini to identify and report incidents of gender violence using Android smartphones. At the press of a button they can raise an alert and register a case with complete details of the perpetrator. The project uses smartphone for crowdsourcing notification, tracking and response coordination system for domestic violence. It uses smartphone survey form using the Open Data Kit to increase reporting and map domestic violence incidents. The system is linked with EyeWatch, an emergency alert system that is integrated with its response coordination system of field staff. This helps in live tracking, mapping raising emergency response and video audio recording. The Sangini’s next step is intervention which she does either by giving home counselling or by bringing the victim to the SNEHA counselling centre.

Little Sister is also linked with a toll free number distributed to the women facing domestic violence. Whenever, survivors face another incident of violence, they can send a missed call to raise an alert for immediate intervention. SNEHA also sends an inconspicuous SMS periodically to clients to prevent any form of repeat violence on them. SNEHA has also developed a Little Sister Club of 10 youths in the community to intervene in domestic violence issues.

Reach & Road Ahead

Presently, the project is active in Dhravi region of Mumbai, Maharashtra. So far, 255 survivors have been benefited and addressed 5,000 cases of violence. SNEHA has received funding from the UN Development Program (UNDP) and Vodafone Foundation for Little Sisters project. Little sister is a crowd source platform that will identify, quantify, map violence and provide timely intervention to prevent ongoing and recurring violence.