Globally, 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes (UN Women). Nationally, intimate partner violence is the most common kind of violence women experience (BC Government).
Despite such an alarming status quo, there remains a lack of education on topics pertaining to personal safety and well-being, fostering cultures of consent, and awareness about available support systems and resources. At BOLT Safety Society, young advocates are working on a solution to ratify this knowledge gap. BOLT Safety Society is a youth-founded, federally-registered not-for-profit building safer and equitable communities. The organization endeavors to end violence, harassment, and abuse through a variety of community-focused programming.
“You could say BOLT Safety is a tech startup meets non-profit, whereby we centralize a database of survivor-centric resources and on-the-ground programming onto our digital platform, available through a mobile app or any web browser”, said Executive Director Vedanshi.
To help promote safety in the local community, the student team officially launched Project Lyghtnyng on October 22nd.
This series of educational workshops aims to decrease violence and abuse through informing a culture of consent, promoting inclusion by flipping victim-blaming narratives, increasing access to resources, and fostering allyship. Project LyghtNyng offers workshops on a variety of topics, customizable by the audience demographic.
Their launch was well-attended by educators, representatives from other non-profits, and supportive community members keen on seeing their program succeed. “According to the UN, in 2021, 81,000 women and girls were killed. This means that every 11 minutes, 1 woman or girl was killed. Our event today is two-hours long”, said Shreyanshi, Operations Director of the BOLT Safety Society and Manager of Project LyghtNyng, at the program launch event.
While still in its early stages, Project LyghtNyng has already delivered workshops in 2 countries, to 7 organizations, and to over 150 participants. The team looks forward to spreading awareness and educating everyone on preventing abuse, harassment, and sexual violence.
Any organization, institution, or company can book a workshop. Those interested in bringing a safety educational workshop to their place of work or schooling may visit boltsafety.org/workshops to learn more and book a workshop.
BOLT Safety Society is a youthled non-profit working towards ending violence, harassment, and abuse.
Website: boltsafety.org
Social Media: @boltsafety