The Safety Aware App: Fighting and Preventing Child Abuse

For the larger part of our society, the idea of someone being capable of harming a child is unfathomable. While we may never be able to come to grips with such acts inflicted upon our children, it’s a harsh reality that can’t be denied. From abuse to neglect, the number of children harmed around the world has spiked in the past two decades (26,000-49,000).

Try as we might to prevent and educate, sometimes our children are put into dangerous situations where there’s no-one to turn to. Sometimes our efforts to protect our children can’t deter those determined to harm them. So how do we help children in these situations?

Ultimately, we must arm our children with the capability to notice potentially dangerous situations and how to act upon their instincts. Though no child is responsible for their own safety, the best defence is sometimes a good offense. By equipping our children with the tools needed to protect themselves, they stand a greater chance of fighting back against those who may harm them. That’s where the Safety Aware App comes in. For more details visit our site:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/759684284/safety-aware-app?ref=18cs5c

Our Mission

Safety Aware is an app designed to help children evaluate possibly dangerous situations, heighten their decision-making abilities, and empower them to protect themselves. The Safety Aware app is created with children between the ages of 6-14 in mind- including those with learning difficulties and Autism.

Our mission is to eventually make Safety Aware easily accessible to children of all backgrounds. In today’s world, children tend to be best reached through technology. Many children’s biggest source of entertainment comes from smartphones, video games, and other devices. Safety Aware capitalizes on this by offering an interactive learning experience more likely to keep them engaged.

How Safety Aware Works to Benefit Children

The Safety Superheroes

The Safety Aware application utilizes the Safety Superheroes to effectively guide children through various lessons. They’ll even be given the power to create, modify, and personalize their own characters! Each superhero focuses on a different valuable concept and will instill the importance of instinct and the best methods to promote personal safety.

The Safety Superheroes include:

• Superheroes EMO and GRANT who teach the importance of taking notice of emotions
• Superhero IVY promotes the importance of hearing and trusting your inner voice to help identify dangerous situations
• Superhero PHIL teaches the child to trust the feelings that they have identified
• Superhero STELLA encourages children to speak up in situations that make them feel unsafe- even if told to keep secrets between them and their abuser.

While Safety Aware focuses its lessons around the Safety Superheroes, it also provides other valuable learning opportunities in the form of: safety scenarios and quizzes, meditations, reflections, and songs.

Additional Safety Features

Apart from providing children with the important methods that they can use to keep themselves safe in the worst situations, Safety App has additional safety features for parents and guardians. While these features are yet to be developed, they are in the works and will be completed upon a successful fundraising campaign.

The first is a smart device designed and developed by industry experts. This device is in the form of a watch that can be connected to two trusted individuals. The watch will possess an SOS feature that will automatically alert these individuals to the child’s GPS location so that they can be found quickly. Time is a major factor in situations of abuse and it’s important to provide emergency help to these children as quickly as possible.

Lastly will be the implementation of a Safety Aware game that will simulate real life situations so that users can put the lessons learned from Safety Aware into practice. This will help to measure the skills instilled in these children through the proper application of the learned methods.

Bringing the Safety Aware App to Life

Safety Aware is a project created with the intention to bring the subject of rising rates of child abuse to the forefront. Most importantly, we believe that Safety Aware can and will be a game-changer in the effort to let children know that they aren’t powerless against those who would harm them. Safety Aware is endorsed and supported by the Child Protections Ministers and was created with the invaluable advice of child psychiatrists, educators, and experts in the field.

With your help, we can make a difference in protecting and arming our children with the preparation and knowledge to take control of their situations. While so many parents feel that they have prepared their children for harmful situations, there is always more work to be done. 70% of parents are unaware of the importance of teaching children the skills they need to keep themselves safe. Instilling your children with the typical, “don’t talk to strangers” simply isn’t enough. We have all the confidence in the world that Safety Aware can make that difference. With your support, we believe we can reach and prepare our children for the worst. This is a growing problem and perpetrators seem to be increasingly confident in their efforts to harm a child and get away with it. Safety Aware fights back.