New Delhi: The Delhi-based OneWorld Foundation India (OWFI) launched a personal safety App on the occasion of the International Women’s Day (IWD). Called Helpi, it is a free Android mobile App designed, developed, and maintained by OWFI, and is available for free on Google Play.
Helpi is positioned as a personal safety smartphone application that users can employ to alert friends and family as well as post the message on social networking sites in the event of an emergency.
Pressing Helpi’s SOS button helps send a pre-configured distress message to all the contacts, including up to five friends, who have been added as an emergency contact. The message also goes to the user’s Twitter account – all this at the push of a button.
Speaking on the launch of the App, Vikas Goswami, Board Member, OneWorld Foundation India, said: “In such a tech-friendly world, women use mobile phones more often than not. Such an application will allow them to reach out to friends, family and the social media. It makes for an effective and useful tool that makes women feel secure specially in today’ economy with the kind of professions and work that is happening.”
More importantly, the app is programmed to automatically send messages at regular intervals, once the emergency has been activated, a necessity in times of growing crimes against women. In a real-life situation, a woman travelling in a bus wanting to send a distress signal just needs to press the distress button. After this, the app will convey her location to her friends every few minutes.
Importantly, if the woman is travelling in a place that has no internet connectivity or GPS, the App sends a quick pre-configured SOS SMS.
Helpi utilises a smartphone`s GPRS, SMS, GPS and Google`s Maps API to send SOS messages when needed. This means that users can send pre-configured SOS emergency in the form of SMS messages to a select group of five friends and relatives with their exact address, GPS location and IMEI number.
Helpi also allows its users to send time-based alerts – users can easily inform friends about their location through GPS. The App also feature a database of helpline numbers.
