Making a Difference’s (Mad) Penny Steyn says she would like to take her domestic watch programme nationally.
Steyn is the coordinator and writer of Mad campaign’s Domestic Watch forum built on educating domestic workers and their employers on various crimes. Her domestic watch programmes include police customer service and crime prevention within communities. She works together with the police and security companies and trains an average of 1 200 domestic workers and gardeners monthly.
She said she wants to share her knowledge of how to report crime anonymously, as this will assist in dealing with the challenge of some crimes being left unsolved. “Criminal activities do not only happen around my area [Sandton] they happen everywhere in the country, but people do not know how to report them,” said Steyn.
She said there is also the opportunity to become a police informer. “Our people need to be taught that they can be paid informers. It can be dangerous, however, our police stations can train them, and the rate of crime will drop,” she said.
She added that the reason people fail to report a crime is because of the police’s response to them. “I also want to teach the police how to respond to the people who come in the stations… For example, they need to show respect to the people who come and ask for help,” said Steyn.
She said even though her training programmes are doing well, she is still faced with the challenge of bringing them together. “I am fighting very hard to try and bring crime prevention and police customer service together since I want to change what I am doing and make it a non-profit organisation,” said Steyn.
In addition, she said she was also looking for a sponsor, as running the programmes has become too expensive for her. “I need sponsorship which should specifically be from a security company, as it will be easy to work with them,” she said.
Do you know how to report a crime anonymously? Tell us how on the Sandton Chronicle Facebook page.
Related articles:
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/202174/domestic-watch-meeting-to-discuss-crime-reporting/
