Walkie Talkie Girlies: The Walking Group Dedicated to Female Student Safety
By Claire Dickson
Aisling Cannon and Georgia Salmons are two second year law students at QUB who came back to the university over the summer and decided that setting up a walking group would be a good way to combat women’s safety issues in the city.
Aisling herself had experience of feeling isolated in Belfast city centre after a night out and struggled to work out how she could get home safely.
‘I ended up getting home with a group of older students and took inspiration from that to start up a walking group at the university. I wanted to make the walking group for women because I think women feel safer when walking with other women.’
For Aisling, that’s what the society is about – ‘women’s safety’. Added to this the students say that the key objectives of the society are to ‘benefit physical and mental wellbeing, get female students outdoors and allow women to meet others/socialise. We hope that it will give female students a sense of security because it can be intimidating to walk alone.’
However, the girls were surprised that a society focused on walking and women’s safety had not been founded prior to this as it is such a key concern for students in the university area. Statistics have shown that Northern Ireland is the most dangerous place in Europe for women whilst measuring general crime, sexual assault and anti-social behaviour statistics from Police UK found that there was an average of 1,450 crimes a month in ‘the Holylands’ student housing area in Belfast making it the fourth most unsafe area of its kind in the UK.
Aisling and Georgia are immensely grateful for the support they’ve received, especially from staff within the QUB School of Law who were ‘enthusiastic about the society and have pointed out lots of resources that we can use.’
If you are interested in joining the society, the girls say that from January there will be weekly walks organised and that keeping an eye on the group’s Instagram page @walkietalkiegirlies will keep you up to date. You can also find the group at the Refreshers Fair on the 17th January.
Edited by David Williamson
Claire Dickson is Head of the Scoop and a 3rd year politics student at QUB.