Strut Safe | Campaign Of The Week
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Strut Safe is support group founded by two Edinburgh students, and works towards ‘dismantling systemic violence against women and marginalised groups’ through offering reassurance, support and a safety network for young people.
What is Strut Safe?
Strut Safe was founded by students Rachel Chung and Alice Jackson in 2021 following the murder of Sarah Everard. Alice and Rachel decided to set up a group, now run entirely by approximately 50 volunteers, which would support and reassure people as they walked home late at night. The community does this via phone calls (in which a member of the public can ring and talk to a volunteer until they are safely home) and an in-person walk home service with two volunteers. Strut Safe is for anyone of any gender, and whilst the in-person service is only available in Edinburgh (for now!), the telephone service is available UK-wide.
Strut Safe takes a number of precautions to make sure that their services are as safe as possible: all phone volunteers are interviewed, trained and background checked prior to beginning the role and in-person volunteers operate in pairs in order to ensure that any person using Strut Safe’s services is never alone with just one volunteer.
Strut Safe is a fantastic service that has been recognised (and rightly so) nationwide, and offers an incredible support system to those walking home alone, whether that’s because it’s too late to ring home for a lift, their partner has gone to bed or they just can’t get a taxi. According to Alice Jackson, co-founder of the group, she’s experienced anxious phone calls with scared young people who have even feared they’re being followed and have run home. Strut Safe’s services are so important in protecting and reassuring these people.
Alice told the BBC: “People who deny that this is an issue, who say that people make this up for attention, that these things don’t really happen, or that the streets aren’t like this – listening in on these calls, there’s no denying it.”
Why do we love them?
It’s incredibly sad that services like Strut Safe need to exist, but we’re so glad that they do. Following Sarah Everard’s murder, hundreds of individuals and brands were questioning what they could do to support young people (women and non-binary people in particular) and keep them safe, and Strut Safe is a brilliant example of that. A free and easy-to-access service with an engaging and relatable social media presence that directly contributes towards solving the problem, we love Strut Safe… particularly because it’s set up and run entirely by Gen Z, which just proves yet again that this is a generation of empathetic, proactive and determined young people who are committed to make the world a better place.
Strut Safe’s phone lines are open Friday and Saturday from 7pm-3am and Sunday from 7pm-1am. Number is: 0333 335 0026.
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