As a group of young people from Moss Side, we have agreed that one of the most difficult aspects of growing up in our area is the street harassment that young women face as they go about their day-to-day lives.
We have already made a short documentary about this.
But we want to run a campaign to end street harassment in our community, by working with local shop keepers and businesses. A lot of the harassment we face happens right out front of shops and businesses, and we think that staff and managers are simply unaware of how unsafe we feel in front of their premises.
We want to set up a pledge programme, where we encourage local businesses/shops to be on our side, and take a pledge to challenge harassment when they see it. Being unaware of how unsafe we feel simply isn't good enough. We want to make shops and businesses pledge be pro-active, and challenge people hollaring at us.
The £500 will be used to hold two or so community events where we invite local business and shop keepers to speak to us and understand our problems, and print off some 'pledge' stickers and posters, so we know which shops have pledged to be our safe spaces. It will also pay for our youth worker's time to support us to do this.
It will go to our youth centre directly.
With thanks to Hideaway Youth and Community centre for their non stop help, and Odd Arts for the awesome documentary. Inspired by our work with PEN.