The Safeguard Women Story

Hello world, allow me to introduce myself, and the story behind Safeguardwomen.org.

My name’s Tiyana, and I’m the founder of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network (HCN). I’m passionate about catalysing positive social change, and helping those working across the social change space to build their changemaking toolkit. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a feminist, but I’ve never been too outspoken about it… until now. Most people who know me, already know that I’m a stripper. I love the job that I do, and the financial freedom it’s given me has allowed me to build HCN while studying full time, and now also doing my PhD. Starting Safeguardwomen.org was definitely not something that was really planned, the idea came one night as I was walking to my car from the club, and then the next day I designed a logo and built this website, ordered out first lot of products, and picked our first charity partner. Seriously, this isn’t a brag; but I want to illustrate how funny the universe is and how everything just… aligns when you’re on the right path.

The video on our Instagram page shares a bit of the story as to how it all came about, but here’s the cliff notes version:

I was followed by a guy while I was walking from the club I work at to my car. As I was walking up the stairwell to the seventh floor, knowing there’s no cameras in the stairs (one of those things we are taught to pay attention to as women,) I grabbed my keys to unlock my car as soon as I could. When I got in my car, I started thinking about how much safer I would have felt if I had a knife on my keychain (yes, I know you can’t actually carry a weapon, but I was scared.) Driving home I started thinking about what I could use on my keys to feel safer, fully prepared to contact a manufacturer if such a thing didn’t exist, but low and behold, it turns out Safety Keys are in fact a thing.

They weren’t very easy to source in Australia, but I was prepared to do what I could to get some, and I realised that so many other girls I worked with would like them… and then I thought about how many women, and others, would probably feel much safer carrying around safety keys. So, I decided that I would sell them. Thinking about the fact that as women, we need to actively be taking actions to be safe frustrated me. How many times have we been told to walk fast and keep our head down. To smile at strangers… but not too much or they might think we’re flirty. Having to walk the long way instead of a shortcut so that there’s more light. To text our loved ones once we’ve arrived somewhere so they know we’re safe. The burden of responsibility shouldn’t be on women to protect themselves… but that’s the world we live in. SO, I decided that if I was going to do this (this being selling safety tools to women and at-risk groups) I was going to use the money from all the sales to fund community and charity projects that are really tackling the root causes of the issues women face, and promoting whole systems change.

So that’s the inspiration behind why I started Safeguard Women. If you’re curious to here more about the role that my experience as a SWer will play in ensuring the organisation is sex positive, you can listen to our first poddy episode!