My SafeSpace

Sexual assault is a heinous crime that knows no bounds when it comes to race, gender, or age. We often turn a blind eye to this shocking reality, avoiding discussions around it due to the social stigma and controversy associated with sexual violence. But it's high time we break this cycle of silence and confront this issue head-on, for statistics reveal that it's far more prevalent than we would like to believe.

According to The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey in 2015, a staggering one in four victims of completed or attempted rape were between the ages of 11 and 18. Youth, who are not yet mature enough to understand the dynamics of vulnerability and abuse, are at a higher risk of being sexually assaulted. This is a sobering thought, particularly when we realize that underserved or marginalized communities face even more significant barriers in accessing support. These barriers include but are not limited to, limited access to WiFi, limited transportation to clinics that offer social services, lack of facilities available in low-income neighborhoods, and the common misconception that certain survivors “deserve” it due to their provocative clothing and behavior.

But the consequences of sexual abuse for teenagers are dire, with failing grades, low self-esteem, and psychological trauma being just a few of the many possible outcomes. According to Science Daily, teens who experience trauma have a 25% percent lower chance of graduating high school. That's why our team is passionate about creating a solution that can help survivors, especially youth. We believe that an app is a way forward, as teens are already accustomed to navigating online resources.

Cornell University research backs up our belief, showing that technology is a powerful tool in delivering mental health services. Working with several teen-oriented organizations, such as New Beginnings and GirlUp, we are brainstorming ways to refine SafeSpace, our app, to make it more appealing to young people. We plan to include features such as a gratitude journal, a mood tracker, a music feature, and a pedometer, among other things, to engage teens and help them recognize the signs of abuse and take action to prevent it.

It's time to take a stand against sexual violence and provide our youth with the resources they need to stay safe and healthy. 

SafeSpace is a revolutionary app that is set to transform the way sexual assault survivors access the help they need. Our app is designed to be discreet, so users can seek help without fear of being found out. We have taken great care to ensure that SafeSpace is a safe and secure space where victims can access six critical resources that can help them escape abuse and start the healing process.

Our app is disguised as a "space invader" game, which is unique and offers complete confidentiality. We are so confident in our concept that we have filed a provisional patent to protect the idea. When users open SafeSpace, they can access six essential resources that can help them access six essential resources that can help young survivors. 

The first resource is a dropdown menu that provides access to national, state-wide, and local domestic violence organizations that have partnered with SafeSpace. Users can write a short message that includes their name, phone number, email address, and a brief description of their situation. This allows them to reach out to professionals discreetly and quickly.

The second resource is a safety plan section that encourages users to upload critical documents to a secure database. This includes birth certificates, passports, social security cards, insurance documents, credit statements, and any other important documents that might be needed in an emergency.

The third resource is a warning signs section that educates users about different types of abuse, including emotional, sexual, economic, physical, and technologically assisted, as well as reproductive coercion, gaslighting, and more. This knowledge is essential for users to identify abusive behavior and seek help before it's too late.

The fourth resource is a self-care tools section that helps users replenish their mental health. Sexual assault is an incredibly sensitive and triggering issue, so this section offers personalized gratitude journals, mood trackers, and physical activity trackers to help users take control of their mental health.

The fifth resource is a document abuse section that enables users to record the date, location, and other critical information about the abuse. This record can make a huge difference in getting the abuser convicted and retrieving money and property from them.

Finally, we have an emergency page that provides immediate help in case users feel unsafe. This section triggers the system to turn the screen black immediately, start an audio recording, send an emergency message to user contacts and the police, and begin flashing the flashlight to provide a distraction.

At SafeSpace, we believe that everyone has the right to access help without fear of being judged or discriminated against. Our app is designed to be user-friendly, discreet, and secure, so users can seek help without fear. We are working with several teen-oriented organizations, such as New Beginnings and GirlUp, to ensure that our app is appealing to young people. Our goal is to give survivors access to the best practices for avoiding relationship abuse, recognizing the signs, and taking action if abuse is suspected.

Sexual assault is a traumatic experience that can have long-lasting effects on the mental and emotional health of the survivor. It is a sad reality that teenagers, regardless of their gender, sexual identity, or demographics, often lack the necessary support and resources to heal from such incidents. The social stigma and fear surrounding sexual assault, coupled with the misunderstanding of what constitutes sexual assault, can prevent survivors from accessing the help they need. This is why teenagers must have access to supportive healing resources via their phones.

Our team was compelled to develop the SafeSpace app after witnessing a disturbing incident of sexual harassment in our school community. This experience prompted us to organize a series of student-led protests to bring attention to the issue of sexual assault and the lack of effective policies in place to protect young people. Our research revealed that survivors of sexual assault often face stigma and judgment, which can prevent them from seeking help. This is especially true for teenagers, who may be more susceptible to external influences and believe that what they are experiencing is "normal" or that they "deserve it." This is especially prevalent with the advent of social media which glorifies toxic behaviors and assault. Therefore, a web-based technology, or app, that disseminates mental health resources that can be personalized specifically for teenagers is necessary.

SafeSpace provides a safe and discreet platform for survivors to access resources tailored specifically for teenagers. Our app allows survivors to receive the help they need without fearing censure or invasion of their privacy. By sharing these resources, we hope to destigmatize the issue of sexual assault and create meaningful public dialogue on the topic. We believe that if we had access to a resource like SafeSpace when the catalytic incident occurred, our school community would have been better equipped to respond to the harassment. Our goal is to help future survivors of sexual and domestic violence through this app, and we hope that SafeSpace will make a meaningful impact in the lives of those who use it.

SafeSpace’s team is not your typical group of individuals working on a project. We are a passionate and driven team that is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of young people affected by sexual assault. Our team is made up of four members, two of whom are young adults, and two seasoned professionals who have been in the field for over 25 years. We are proud of our diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences, which have enabled us to create an app that is both effective and accessible.

The youth on our team has been actively involved in raising awareness about the issue of sexual assault and advocating for change in our school community. We have engaged in conversations with our peers, listened to their stories, and learned about the challenges they face when seeking support. By incorporating the perspectives of youth, SafeSpace is designed to provide resources that are relevant and accessible to the people who need them the most.

As co-founders of SafeSpace’s app, Ananya Aatreya and Gauri Gupta have a unique perspective on the issue of sexual assault. They have witnessed firsthand the impact that sexual assault has on young people, and they are committed to providing a safe and supportive space for survivors to heal. Ananya's expertise in coding and app development has been invaluable in creating a user-friendly interface for the app. Gauri's skills in community outreach and marketing have helped to spread the word about SafeSpace and engage with organizations that work with survivors of sexual assault.

Our adult mentors, Karina Tamayo, and Ward Urion, bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the team. They have worked tirelessly in the field of survivor support and social services for over 25 years, and they have been instrumental in helping us develop best practices for supporting survivors and addressing the legal measures necessary when developing the app. With their guidance, we have been able to conduct community outreach and speak at events across the state, raising awareness about the importance of supporting survivors of sexual assault.

We are passionate about the work that we do, and we are proud of the impact that we have been able to make through the SafeSpace app. Our team is committed to continuing to improve and expand the app so that it can reach as many young people as possible. We believe that our diverse backgrounds and skills have been instrumental in making SafeSpace a success, and we are excited to continue working together to make a difference in the lives of young people affected by sexual assault.

SafeSpace is currently in the prototype phase rather than a simple concept because we have already created multiple versions of SafeSpace, first a basic version through MIT app inventor and then a more polished version on Flutter Flow. Our team is currently partnering with local domestic violence prevention organizations as well as our school teacher's to host beta testing workshops to receive valuable feedback before we deploy our app to the market.

Our team is applying to Solve because we are thrilled with the possibilities of being a part of a visionary network of inspiring change-makers at Solve to have access to unique mentors who can guide in navigating the complex world of nonprofit management and addressing sensitive issues like domestic violence. As young people, we recognize the importance of collaboration and seek technical assistance to scale SafeSpace’s interface and make it more user-friendly as well as overcome the legal and technical issues associated with starting a nonprofit. We are eager to learn from Solve’s ingenious insights and believe this will help us reach even greater heights in our mission to create a supportive world for survivors.

SafeSpace is designed by a team of dedicated individuals who are passionate about providing support offers a unique solution for teenage survivors of assault. Our approach is tech-driven, and we leverage the latest technologies such as Python, Java Scripts, and machine learning to personalize support in a data-driven, accessible, and scalable manner.

We understand that sexual assault is a sensitive topic, and many teens do not seek help due to the stigma associated with it. That's why we went to great lengths to ensure our solution maintains user privacy and confidentiality. Our decoy mechanism is a game-like homepage that disguises the app's true intentions, providing a secure and confidential environment for users to access the resources they need.

Our strategy involves bundling SafeSpace inside other common apps like game apps or news apps. The access to SafeSpace from the other app, say a Space game, is controlled by an authentication mechanism that is both easy and quick for the actual user, while also extremely non-obvious to a casual observer. 

The authentication is based on a pattern that the user can configure such as any of the following:  triggering a certain event in the Space game, clicking on a widget a certain number of times or triggering some class of events, entering the wrong password a certain number of times for the Space game account itself, or using a different set of passwords in Space game that lead users either to the Space game itself or SafeSpace. The exact mechanism is less critical and there could be multiple ways employed depending on user preference. Once in SafeSpace users would also have single-click access back to the Space app. This would allow users to safely access and use SafeSpace and toggle back to the Space app immediately as and when necessary.

At SafeSpace, we recognize that our innovation is unique and fresh in the market, and we take pride in that fact. Before launching the app, we conducted extensive market research, which revealed that many apps attempting to address the issue of sexual assault are ineffective and too costly, making it difficult for low-income minorities to access them.

We are committed to ensuring that our app is accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial situation. We believe that everyone should have access to the support they need to heal from traumatic experiences. As a result, we have worked hard to make SafeSpace available to all at no cost, and we intend to keep it this way through a variety of grants, which will be explained in the financial section.

Finally, our team is currently in the process of filing a provisional patent to protect our unique decoy mechanism, which disguises the actual homepage within a game-like homepage. We believe that our innovation is revolutionary, and we want to ensure that our idea remains protected and is available to the public for years to come through the constant update of teenage-oriented features, such as a gratitude journal, music, pedometer, and more.

1. Expanding SafeSpace to Other School Districts: At the heart of SafeSpace is a deeply personal experience of sexual assault within our school district. Our team is committed to ensuring that students have access to the resources and support they need to cope with such traumatic experiences. To this end, we are working closely with the district's counseling department to verify SafeSpace as an approved resource for students throughout the district. Once we establish SafeSpace within our current school district, we will have the credibility to expand it to other school districts throughout the state, where it can benefit even more teenagers.

2. Establishing SafeSpace as a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization: SafeSpace's mission to support teenage survivors of sexual assault and create a safer environment for all is one that we believe deserves the backing of the community. We are in the process of establishing SafeSpace as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which will allow us to receive tax-exempt donations and offer tax-break incentives to donors. To achieve this, we will receive fiscal sponsorship from a local domestic violence organization, and with community support, we can continue to make SafeSpace available to those who need it most.

3. Mobilizing Teenagers to Mitigate Sexual Violence: Sexual violence among teenagers is a pervasive issue that requires urgent attention. To create awareness and mobilize teenagers to act, our team is partnering with Interlake High School's Gender-Oriented Violence Activism and Advocacy Club to raise funds, create posters, and generate advertising materials for a school-wide event. Our goal is to create a safe and open environment where teenagers can share their experiences, learn about the prevalence of sexual violence among their peers, and discover ways to mitigate it within their community.

4. Polishing SafeSpace's UX and Launching it for Consumer Use: Our team has dedicated countless hours to developing SafeSpace into a user-friendly, accessible, and reliable app that survivors of sexual assault can trust. To expedite this process, we plan to partner with nonprofit coding organizations such as Opportunity Hack and Code for the Dream. These collaborations will allow our team to work alongside volunteer developers to bring SafeSpace to fruition and be ready for beta testing by the end of 2023.

5. Transformational Impact on Lives: Our team's ultimate goal is to make SafeSpace available to as many teenagers as possible. Our initial target is to have 1500 users in the first year, increasing the number of users by 15% each year for the next five years. With over 1 million teens experiencing sexual or domestic violence each year as reported by the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, we hope to reach 10% of these teens within the first five years of introducing SafeSpace. By providing a safe and confidential space for teenagers to seek support, we hope to make a transformational impact on their lives and break down the stigma associated with sexual assault.

SafeSpace's mission is more than just an app - it's a plan of action divided into three phases: prevention, intervention, and recovery. Our team is passionate about destigmatizing the issues of sexual assault and domestic violence, and we plan to do so by leading engaging and interactive workshops tailored specifically toward teenagers during the prevention phase. By educating teenagers on these issues, we hope to create a culture of activism where youth feel comfortable asking for help and empowering their peers. We believe that community-related events are an important measure of our success, as well as the number of domestic violence organizations that help with our cause, as this specifically aligns with one of SafeSpace’s features of allowing the user to recognize different signs of abuse.

In the intervention phase, our goal is to empower and support survivors by connecting them with confidential resources available through our app. We recognize that reporting incidents of abuse can be incredibly difficult, which is why SafeSpace is designed to be as discreet and confidential as possible. We plan to measure our success by the number of users who download and actively use SafeSpace and by the number of times users use SafeSpace to report incidents of abuse. We will also be monitoring changes in policies to ensure that survivors receive the support they need, which aligns with SafeSpace’s defining feature of disguising the app within a decoy space game.

Finally, in the recovery phase, our focus will be on creating a culture of activism in the community by empowering students to report incidents of abuse, especially those in schools. We believe that students play a vital role in mitigating sexual violence within their communities, and we want to provide them with the resources and support they need to do so. We will be measuring our success by the changes in policies and resources available to student survivors.

Through these phases, our ultimate goal is to continue productive dialogues on this highly-stigmatized issue and to protect and heal survivors. As a team, we are committed to making a real impact on the lives of those affected by sexual assault and domestic violence, and we believe that our plan of action is the best way to do so.

SafeSpace is a labor of love, a passionate effort to tackle the complex and devastating issue of sexual and domestic violence. Our team is dedicated to driving real change in our communities by educating and empowering youth to take action against these injustices. We believe that education is key to breaking down the stigma around sexual assault and creating a support system for survivors. By fostering open dialogue and creating safe spaces for discussion, we can build a stronger, more resilient community that works to prevent and heal from these traumas.

To achieve our mission, we are working closely with inspiring youth from the Bellevue Youth Council to establish a robust support system for young people throughout the community. We believe that by providing young people with opportunities to contribute to the development of SafeSpace, we can empower them to become agents of change in their own right. Through technical development, social media management, and other activities that align with their interests and passions, we hope to create a culture of activism where youth feel confident in using their voices to address issues within their communities.

Our community outreach efforts have already yielded promising results. We recently led an interactive and engaging workshop at the New Beginnings Youth Retreat, where we reached out to a group of 30+ young people between the ages of 11-18. The overwhelmingly positive feedback we received gave us the confidence to bring the same workshop to the University of Washington-Bothell, where we were able to diversify our target audience and reach out to 15 college students. Through the use of exit surveys and verbal comments, over 85% of the attendees commented on the relief they felt being able to frankly talk about the issue of sexual assault. Our team also collaborated with LifeWire to produce a 30-minute podcast that highlighted the importance of leveraging technology to support youth. The podcast received over 1000 streams within the first month and was primarily listened to by young people.

These community outreach activities highlight the extent to which SafeSpace has been able to build awareness and engage young people on the issue of sexual and domestic violence. As we continue to seek out opportunities to create a culture of activism, we remain steadfast in our belief that education and community-building are essential to preventing and healing sexual assault. We invite everyone to join us in this important mission to create safer and more supportive communities for all.

At SafeSpace, we are constantly working on improving our app to provide the best possible service to our users. To ensure that our app works seamlessly on both Android and iOS, we are using Firebase for cloud storage and Flutter Native for development and backend. We are also utilizing FlutterFlow for UI/UX design to create a responsive design that works well on all devices. In addition to this, our app is equipped with a variety of sensors like location and motion, and we use JSON for formatting data, as well as audio and video recording capabilities. 

To further enhance the security of our users' data, we are currently exploring the use of blockchain technology. This will ensure that all data stored on our app is secure and cannot be tampered with. Additionally, we are working on integrating web scraping and API calls so that people can easily find nearby shelters when needed. Finally, we are also considering the addition of an AI assistant or chatbot to help users navigate the app and provide them with helpful information. We believe that these new technologies will take our app to the next level and provide an even better user experience.

At SafeSpace, we understand that sexual assault can happen to anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or racial identity. That's why we've made it our mission to create a diverse, multi-faceted solution that applies to all, including low-income individuals and people of color. Our leadership team is composed of individuals of various ages, cultural identities, and gender orientations, including White, Latine, South Asian, queer, and non-gender-binding team members. This diversity allows us to better understand the unique circumstances of survivors and to partner with organizations that represent populations we lack.

To ensure equitable access to our resources, we have made SafeSpace completely free of charge and do not require any sort of payment or subscription model. We rely on community-oriented grants and partnerships with organizations that share our vision of providing healing resources to those in need.

We've also prioritized inclusion in the app's design, allowing users to personalize the interface according to their preferences. For instance, users can choose the music they want to listen to and customize the screen color to their liking. We've also implemented high-contrast color palettes and text boxes to increase accessibility for users with visual needs.

Through our efforts to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into our project, we aim to make SafeSpace accessible and inclusive to youth of all demographics. We believe everyone deserves the right to heal and support themselves from the trauma of sexual assault, and we are committed to making that a reality.

As a nonprofit organization, SafeSpace is dedicated to supporting victims of sexual assault and preventing future incidents. Our team is committed to reinvesting any donations received back into local organizations that share our vision, such as LifeWire and WSCADV.

SafeSpace is directed by two passionate owners, Gauri Gupta and Ananya Aatreya, who work tirelessly to ensure that our app is accessible and user-friendly. Although they do not receive a salary for their efforts, they are driven by their desire to create a safe and supportive community for survivors of sexual assault.

We understand that younger people are at greater risk of abuse, which is why we believe that school and college students will benefit most from our app and be our largest user group. That's why we have made SafeSpace completely free of charge to ensure that everyone can access our resources without financial burden. We are also committed to avoiding any advertising within the app to maintain a safe and uninterrupted user experience.

We hope that parents, schools, college administrators, and nonprofit organizations that work to help abuse victims will become advocates for and users of our app. We plan to make our app available for download on our website, the App Store, and Play Store and conduct workshops and participate in conferences to raise awareness about our app. We are even exploring partnerships with schools and districts to make SafeSpace a requirement for students to download and sign onto the app, as one contact has suggested.

To ensure that our app meets the needs of our users, we plan to build a feedback form within the app. Through this feedback, we will continue to add features and make improvements to the app to better serve our community.

Through our business model, SafeSpace's goal is to provide value to teenagers and make our app accessible to those who need it. We are passionate about creating a supportive community for survivors of sexual assault and are committed to making SafeSpace a valuable resource for all.

Creating SafeSpace was a deeply personal journey for our founders, Gauri Gupta, and Ananya Aatreya. Both of them had personal experiences with sexual assault and saw the need for an accessible, easy-to-use, and free platform that could help survivors find help and support when they need it most. They poured their hearts and souls into designing the app, ensuring that it would be easy to navigate and available to everyone who needs it, regardless of their financial situation.

To make the app as accessible and effective as possible, we made the difficult decision to keep it entirely free of charge. We did not want to put any financial burden on survivors, especially those from low-income communities, who may already be struggling to access the resources they need. Instead, we decided to rely on grants from government and non-profit organizations that share our vision of providing support to survivors of sexual assault.

But we also know that we need to explore other sustainable funding options to keep the app running and growing. We are currently exploring the idea of partnering with game and news portal companies to integrate with our app. By doing so, we believe that we can reach a wider audience and offer more value to our users. It's a win-win situation where companies can benefit from more views for their apps and show visible support for a worthy cause, and we can generate funds to improve our app and support more survivors.

At SafeSpace, we believe that everyone deserves the right to heal and access support when they need it most. We are committed to making that a reality and will continue to explore innovative ways to ensure that our app remains accessible, effective, and free for all who need it.

SafeSpace has so far received 4 main grants from different governmental and non-governmental organizations:

1. We received a $1000 grant from the United Nations Foundations because of how closely SafeSpace’s mission aligns with the United Nation’s 5th goal of Sustainable Development of Gender Equality.

2. We received a $5000 grant from the Bellevue Rotary Club because of how our team has created various avenues where youth throughout our community can directly contribute to the success of SafeSpace. These include helping us with beta-testing, social media management, and community outreach activities. Additionally, we've received these sustainable grants because our team has been working closely with the Bellevue City Council members and the Bellevue Youth Council, SafeSpace has established a strong presence with the Bellevue City government to receive these sustainable grants.

3. We received a $250 grant from Hershey: Youth Service of America Grant because of how SafeSpace is actively emulating its core values of empathy, gratitude, and kindness, and our plan to implement a community-wide event on National Youth Day on April 28 to build awareness.

4. We received a $200 stipend from the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV), a nonprofit organization that assists domestic violence survivors and their families. Our team has been working with WSCADV to help share SafeSpace with as many youths as possible and to raise awareness of sexual assault within the community. Because of our close relationship with WSCADV, our team was offered to serve as key panelists for WSCADV’s Facebook live panel in October during Domestic Violence Awareness month where we shared our thoughts regarding how to best support survivors in schools. Through our collaboration, our team received a $200 stipend to recognize our work and time. We also have an upcoming volunteer event with WSCADV in June, for which we will receive a $500 stipend. Through continued work and collaboration with WSCADV, our team expects a steady flow of financial sustainability from their organization.