Laura De Belectis, a clinical psychologist, has a mission: to make the streets safer for women. Her commitment was born in March 2021, when the whole world learned of the tragic story of Sarah Everard, a young woman who was kidnapped, raped and killed by a policeman in London on her way home in the evening. That episode shook the whole world and sparked protests and clashes with the police in many cities.
Laura De Dilectis has decided not to stand idly by, but to act concretely to prevent further violence. Thus, she took advantage of social networks to create and disseminate Donnexstrada, non-profit association born with Ilaria Saliva e Georgia Spencer Davison. Donnexstrada is also a profile Instagram active that offers an innovative service: virtually accompany women who feel in danger through a video call.
How it works is simple: women who want to use the service send a message to the profile and are put in contact with one of the 200 volunteers who have offered to collaborate on the project. Volunteers are available during the night and speak different languages, so as to cover the whole European territory. During the video callthe volunteers converse with the women, reassure them and help them reach theirs safe destination.
Donnexstrada accompanies and supports women on the way home
Donnexstrada had immediate success: in just four days, the profile went from 600 to 70,000 followers. But that’s not all: Laura De Dilectis was also awarded by “Forbes” as one of the most influential people under 30 and won the European Women in Business 2022 award.
Donnexstrada makes available to its users a series of servicesincluding sessions of video call for accompanying people who feel in danger on the street, psychological support, legal advice, nutritional support and gynecological support.
Recently, an innovative application called VIOLA, developed by the start-up V. Srl, of which Laura De Dilectis is the managing director. The app is still under development, but it can become VIOLA tester and start using it, and is conceived as a practical and technological answer to video calls via Instagram, and represents an important step in the journey towards creating a safe and inclusive urban space for all women. VIOLA was recently awarded the Myllennium Award 2023 in the MySOCIALIMPACT category which rewards the best business idea or startup with a high social impact on the community.
The doctor Laura De Belectis in this interview told us about the birth of the association and the application and how VIOLA and Donnexstrada are driving change and paving the way towards a safer future for all women.
How Donnexstrada was born
Laura De Belectis
Laura De Belectis: “Donnexstrada was born in march 2021 following the death of Sarah Everard, a woman who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in London. At that moment I realize that many women are afraid on the street, and I too, who personally could have died many times on the street”.
“I understand that there is a huge problem, that of road safety for women. So I draw up a project as a psychologist, an intervention project in the community, which involves networking, such as institutions, universities, associations, to do something against gender-based violence, for street safety, for women”.
“We are developing various supports which today are four: psychological, legal, gynecological and nutritional support. We have a safe night in the pipeline, the suspended taxi, i.e. training taxi drivers to intervene if there is a problem on the street and safely accompany women home. The suspended taxi was born from the idea of inclusiveness, accessibility of a means that today is perceived as the safest one but also as the expensive one”.
“For now we want to start with training; the safe night, or rather train all night drivers to ensure safe vehicles for women: also in this case we tried to dialogue with Atac in Rome, for example, without success”.
The purple dots
We are very excited* to finally share with you the map that locates the FIRST 100 PURPLE POINTS formed by our association!
The project was born two years ago from an idea by Greta Martinez following a need to create safer cities, with the desire to activate + pic.twitter.com/BBS55DLqW6— DonnexStrada (@DonnexStrada) June 1, 2023
“Purple Dots is a project born from Greta Martinez, co-founder of the association. Greta thought it would be useful to form all those nightclubs, possibly close to where you can party or where you can drink, so that if the woman is in trouble she can ask for help ”.
“From there the project expanded. In these two years we have reasoned differently and we have come to form not only the night club or restaurant but also pharmacies, beauty centres, gyms and therefore any commercial establishment open to the public”.
“This serves precisely to bring the citizen, who perhaps does not deal with violence, closer to understanding how to speak and to intervene as soon as possible. What we do know is that unfortunately women often do not turn to anti-violence centres, so in this way we hope to be able to make a difference, in addition to the fact that we give concrete tools to the trader himself, who may find himself faced with a situation of possible crime”.
A video call on Instagram to feel safer
“In addition to this there was video calling, live broadcasting on the street: it’s a call center which, however, can be done on social media. The idea that then made Donnexstrada go viral is the international accompanying video project, and subsequently the app”.
“This service has been very successful because it uses the social network, i.e. an already existing tool, and thanks to a network of volunteers it keeps people traveling alone and anyone afraid on the street company via video call”.
“In this case we were able to have a palliative that made women feel safer starting from the fact that the video call was recorded video, and that it has criminal value, therefore it is not a call to a friend on your way home, but a video call that has a witness, who is the volunteer on the other side, and also the digital testimony that is even more valuable. Hence the idea of being able to launch the association, or to open a start-up, to make an application”.
“We opened the non-profit in June 2021, with the name Donnexstrada, and the start-up was born exactly one year later, in May 2022. So let’s also start thinking about the application, with all the necessary elements: geolocation, direct call to the police, maps, video calls, everything that technology allows us to do to work on safety among women because obviously Instagram wasn’t enough, it didn’t have all these features”.
The PURPLE application
“At that point we transform the video call service into an international one, therefore not only Italian: I make a call-to-action and I gather volunteers of different languages from all over Europe: today we are 17/18 languages and at least 200 volunteers, mostly in Italy and Germany because we have more requests”.
“We are starting to develop the first version of the app, which will be very basic, it will simply have video calling. Then we bring the video call from Instagram to an application that we have. For now it is being tested, with those who have signed up to be testers, because we have so much membership that we prefer to test it with just a few people. We prefer to test it with the first 500 people and then launch it on the market later”.
“The aspect of the application is something you need to have a certain vision of: even communicating with Italy was difficult. At the entrepreneurial level, the international world, the European world and the American world are obviously easier. We notice big differences in long-term planning vision. In this Italy, Italy is a country with very low business risk and investments are made only afterwards and actions are taken only after the feminicides and not before”.
“There is no prevention, so we see a very low level of action and we are focusing on this at an international level because after two years we realize that to do a certain type of job you have to switch to other types of interlocutors”.
Women asking for assistance
“In terms of age range, it is the classic Instagram target, therefore from 18 to 35 years old, because that is where the association is best known and most present; we are also present on Facebook and we speak above all to mothers, who want their daughters to know more, rather than to women who are still afraid today”.
“I must say that on this we notice heterogeneity, both in terms of age and city, therefore at a demographic level, they write to us from smaller villages rather than larger cities. The service is open to everyone, but only women write to us, occasionally men write to us, perhaps from the LGBT+ community, but we don’t even go to differentiate. It is important for us to be inclusive from the start”.
The project and the future
“We would like to continue with the purple points, to date we have trained 100 of them, we hope to be able to train at least 700, obviously we need funds to do this: a project that costs €40,000 for every 100 points…