Sexual Assault Must Come to a Halt

Mount Mercy College, Model Farm Road, Cork, 2014

Sexual Assault Must Come to a Halt
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CATEGORY: Make Our World Safer Challenge

The Idea

This project tackles the issue of sexual assault. The students chose this issue because they felt there was a lack of education among girls and a definite lack of awareness among boys on the subject and they wished to make a positive change to this. 

The Action

The team introduced self-defence into the Transition Year module in their school. They created numerous posters that both drew people in and shared the team's knowledge of sexual assault in Ireland. They helped fundraise for the Sexual Violence Centre, Cork. Throughout our project the team had a close connection with this organisation and they helped the team to determine exactly what they needed to do to help their community, as well educating about sexual assault in Cork, Ireland, and throughout the world. The team sold Christmas cards in their school, during the winter.The money raised from this was going towards helping victims of sexual assault.

The team created a safety application named ‘ShakeSafe. They aimed to develop an app which is easily accessible in the event of an emergency to people of all ages. The main feature is the safety alarm which will sound if the application is open and the device is shaken. Once the alarm is activated, as well as sounding the alarm, the application will send an emergency message to three pre-selected contacts. Along with the alarm, the app will feature ‘Top Tips’ that we have found through our research of this topic and speaking to experts in this field.    

The Impact

Once the App is completed the team plans to reach out to national teenage magazines and local radio stations. Both of these can allow us to let people know about our app and our aims. We also are planning to put posters up, advertising our app, in every secondary school in the country. Plans have been set out to target secondary schools in Cork first, followed by Munster and then on to the rest of the country.

Award Winner
2014 Young Social Innovators of the Year Silver Award