Free safety App for victims of domestic abuse

THE topics of gender-based violence and domestic abuse have forced their way into work, school, family and community conversations over the past few weeks, following a number of highly publicised murders of South African women.

However, the rumbling of this storm started some time ago. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) global study on homicide relating to gender-related killing of women and girls (2018), in 2017, 69 per cent of all women killed in Africa were killed by their intimate partners. The sad reality is that South African women are not safe, even in their own homes.

The Warrior Project, established earlier this year to provide victims of domestic abuse and violence with access to information and resources, has seen a flood of activity over the past month, spurring it to include a further resource to its directory – a GPS-enabled safety app, Namola.

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“It made sense for us to include this service as a resource of The Warrior Project to give victims a tool to request emergency services to be dispatched to the GPS co-ordinates of their phones,” said Yvonne Wakefield, founder of the Warrior Project.

Claire Sherwell, the response centre manager at Namola, said through Namola, victims can request emergency assistance from police, ambulances and other emergency services. “Our response centre operators do everything in their power to get victims the assistance they need, hold first responders accountable and hold victims’ hands through the entire process.”

Namola is freely available nationwide, either from the Apple App Store or Google Play, or at www.thewarriorproject.org.za/resources.

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