Women's Safety Audit Guide
The Women’s Safety Audit guide is the step by step instructions to communities about how to organize, and conduct a safety audit in their neighbourhood or public space of concern.
The Safety Audit guide is published in English and in French and contains helpful tips about who to involve in your safety audit. We suggest communities include their local councillor, manager of the space being audited, as many community residents as possible. It is important to include residents who might be more vulnerable in the space. These tips will help you conduct a more complete audit.
Examples of a number of tools can be found in the guide: flyers, samples of criteria to use during a walk about, examples of action plans are all available for communities to follow.
The guide is available for sale for a minimal cost. If your group has no funding and cannot afford the fee, please do get in touch with us at WISE at 613-230-6700 or by info@wiseottawa.ca to speak with our staff.
The Women’s Safety Audit Implementation Guide
The Women’s Implementation Guide is a step-by-step set of instructions to guide groups about how to proceed once a safety audit has been done in your public space. It is available in English and French.
Building on the energy from the Community Safety Audit, once they have heard back from city hall, or from the own/manager of the space about how and when they will address concerns outlined in the safety audit, the community can construct definite plans to move forward having their concerns addressed and remedial action implemented. Sample letters and plans of action are presented as templates to follow.
The guide is available for sale for a minimal cost. If your group has no funding and cannot afford the fee, please do get in touch with us at WISE at 613-230-6700 or by info@wiseottawa.ca to speak with our staff.
Addressing the Personal Safety Concerns of Health Care and Social Service Providers in Rural areas
This guide is also available in French and English. It is intended to focus on the safety concerns of professionals who work in the area of health care and social services and who provide home visits or one on one visits with clients.
The Study that was done, which resulted in this manual, looked at safety procedures in professionals’ workplaces to safeguard workers who provide service in private homes. The tips and personal stories were gleaned from providers who had experienced concerns about their own safety while providing service or while enroute to the client’s destination.
This manual provides a host of tips and safety information that healthcare and providers of social services can implement for themselves and generally for employees who work independently. Although done a number of years ago, the manual is still current and flush with useful valid information for professionals working on their own.
The guide is available for sale for a minimal cost. If your group has no funding and cannot afford the fee, please do get in touch with us at WISE at 613-230-6700 or by info@wiseottawa.ca to speak with our staff.
Safety Audit Report of OC Transpo Stations Phase 1 2 3 & 4
Starting in 2000, WISE, then known as WACAV, began a series of audits of bus transit stations and later O-train stations to evaluate and document how passengers were feeling about the public space at transit stations.
Begun following the complaint of a woman who was assaulted at a local station, Blair station was used as a pilot project. Extensive surveying and audits were done of the space and City Council decided to contract our organization to study the remaining stations.
In each report, documentation is available on individual stations with their concerns as identified by audit participants, and the recommendations for action plans to remedy the problem areas. List of stations is as follows:
Phase 1: Queensway, Iris, Lees, South Keys, Tunney’s Pasture, Westboro, Place d’Orleans, St. Laurent and Billings Bridge.
Phase 2: Lebreton, Baseline, Campus, South Keys, Greenboro, Carleton, and Bayshore.
Phase 3: Carling, Confederation, Fallowfield, Lycée Claudel, all four stops along Slater St. eastbound, all four stops along Albert St. westbound, Riverside, and Pleasant Park.
Phase 4: Trim Road, Montreal Road & Jeanne d’arc, Mackenzie King & Laurier, Walkley, Baseline, Hurdman, Terry Fox and Lincoln Fields.
If you have a concern about any particular space, you can still get in touch with WISE to assist you with your concerns.
All 4 phases of the OC Transpo reports are available for sale for a minimal cost. If your group has no funding and cannot afford the fee, please do get in touch with us at WISE at 613-230-6700 or by info@wiseottawa.ca to speak with our staff.
Personal Safety workshop for Women and Girls
This is a manual that supports an interactive workshop in which WISE staff covers the topics of safety awareness, assertiveness, safety in all types of environments: at home, street, public transportation, online, etc. We look to provide tips on how one can develop strategies to deal with all kinds of safety concerns. The workshops can be conducted in English or in French and manuals contain information on self defense.
Contact us to book a workshop and gather access to this useful manual chalked full of resources and tips. Contact WISE staff at 613-230-6700 or info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety for Seniors
This resource manual offers resources, tips and strategies seniors can use to help them remain safe in their homes, while travelling, interacting with attendants and service providers, while using medications, or to prevent injuries through falls.
Our workshops and manual focuses on helping the senior learn to deal in a positive but assertive way to caregivers or helpers who may take advantage and make seniors more vulnerable.
This English or French manual can be made available following participation in a workshop on Personal Safety for Seniors. Call the WISE staff to book a workshop for your group at 613-230-6700 or info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety for Youth
The manual published in English and French supports a truly interactive fun workshop directed at youth to look at all contexts of safety for them. It looks at contemporary music and the portrayal of women in the lyrics and music videos, socialization of girls and boys; how it differs and the consequences. We look at and provide tips on cyber safety to prevent stalking, cyber blackmail and bullying as well as a host of other topics. The manual is colourful, packed full of fun items like search words, and cartoons.
If you wish to access the Youth manual, book a workshop with WISE. Call us at 613-230-6700 or write to info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety for Immigrant and Refugee Women
This manual contains much of the information from our general Personal Safety Workshop. However, it is tailored to contain information that would be of use specifically for women who are newcomers to Canada. It has information on your rights, what to do if a sponsor is abusing you, where you can find support and resources, and provides info about further resources.
If you wish to access this guide, contact WISE staff at 613-230-6700 or info@wiseottawa.ca the manual is available in English, French and Arabic.
Personal safety for Women who are Blind or Visually Impaired
This manual is available in print, large print, on audio, or in braille. Building on the general information on personal safety, this is chalked full of tips for women who are blind or visually impaired. It includes self defense techniques that would be useful and relevant for a woman with a visual disability.
If you wish to access a manual, contact us for a Personal Safety Workshop at 613-230-6700 or info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety for Women who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
This manual builds on the general information provided in the document “Personal Safety for Women and Girls”. This manual offers additional tips for women who are deaf or hard of hearing to help develop strategies for safety. It provides some valuable tips on strategies and equipment such as the installation of visual alarms.
Contact WISE staff if you wish to book a workshop and access this manual at 613-230-6700 or info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety for women who use wheelchairs or Mobility devices
This manual supports an interactive workshop designed to provide strategies and tips for women who use wheelchairs and mobility devices in their daily lives. Too many women think that once they are in a wheelchair or walker, they are now completely vulnerable. This is far from the truth! In our workshop, we show what can be done by women in chairs or on walkers, with little required strength and leads to women feeling more positive about maintaining control of their own safety.
If you wish to book a workshop and access the manual, give us a call at WISE 613-230-6700 or write to info@wiseottawa.ca
Personal Safety Empowerment Project
This is a personal safety workshop designed to provide relevant and important information to women living in abusive situations or for women who have just left abusive situations. The workshop is a multi-part workshop dealing with a lot of the basic information, but also contains more specific resources and tips for women fleeing abusive and sometimes extremely violent partners.
The manual is available in English, French, Arabic, and Spanish. It contains information on keeping yourself safe at home, when you’re out, using public transit, preventing stalking and intimidation from ex-partners. The manual covers advances in technological person-finding techniques and discusses strategies that women might use to deal with these risky situations. It provides self-defense tips as well.
Please do contact WISE if your group has the need for a Personal Safety Empowerment multi-part workshop and manual. We would be pleased to book that for you. Call us at 613-230-6700 or write to info@wiseottawa.ca
Community Articles on Women’s Safety
Browse the articles presented to local community papers dedicated to certain safety topics for women. Give yourself a refresher on some common sense techniques. To access the tips:
WISE Safety Tips for Women
Dating Safety Tips
Personal Workplace Safety
Protect Your Privacy
Safety For Women On Wheels
Safety Tips for Seniors