Elsa Marie Dsilva

Be the change you want to see. We all have heard this at some point in our lives, but Elsa Marie Dsilva has dared to apply this in an effort to change the society at large. After being in the aviation industry for almost 20 years, Elsa wanted to serve a bigger purpose in life. The horrific gang rape of 2012 that shook the nation, made Elsa realize that the crimes and violence against women cannot be tolerated. She launched Safecity, a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces to combat this pandemic of sexual crimes against women. The objective of Safecity was bigger than just providing the stories of sexual harassment, it wanted to bridge the gap between official statistics of sexual violence that were underreported and the actual experience that was faced by women in their daily lives. With the collected data, this initiative proved to be an eye-opener for the officials as well as the common man. Along with surfacing the data, Safecity is empowering women to open up and speak out boldly about their personal experiences on sexual harassment, so that the issue can grab the attention it really needs to. Elsa understands that encouraging and empowering women against sexual crimes is the need of the hour which cannot be ignored. She aims to turn public places safer, and also she wants to see every woman living the life true to her potential with a mind without fear of harassment.