The youth-driven Not One More Girl initiative that addresses sexual harassment and gender-based violence on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) is expanding with new strategies to build a culture of supporting girls when riding transit.
Not One More Girl is a BIPOC youth-led initiative in partnership with community-based organizations and BART to end gender-based violence. Not One More Girl has become a model in the transit industry. It provided inspiration for SB 1161, which was signed into law in 2022, as well as SB 434, which is currently moving through the Legislature, to address harassment on transit and collect survey data to inform safety efforts.
The second phase places emphasis on enabling people to have a greater sense of empowerment in a harassment situation and exhibits tools that fellow riders can use to provide support when harassment occurs.
The new tools being offered to the public are the product of a partnership between BART, The Betti Ono Foundation, and The Unity Council’s Latina Mentorship and Achievement Program, who worked together to engage local high school and college students about their experiences on transit and their ideas for action-based strategies to enhance safety and support people experiencing sexual harassment on transit. The approach for the second phase of Not One More Girl is to deepen the reach and impact of the ongoing work to increase safety at BART.
The Betti Ono Foundation, led by Anyka Howard, developed an Arts & Civic Engagement Fellowship, offering paid opportunities for transitional-age youth (ages 16-24) to guide this phase of the initiative and to amplify the voices of BIPOC and gender-expansive youth. The fellows attended design workshops in Spring 2023 and curated the theme, “Our Story of Courage,” for this phase of Not One More Girl to educate the public about safe bystander intervention as a method of preventing and interrupting harassment and other safety tips for riding BART.
The latest phase includes art posters outlining safety tips and bystander intervention cards for riders to discreetly pass to people to prompt bystander intervention actions and report harassment when it is taking place.
In addition, beginning September 11, BART will size trains for safety and run shorter trains to eliminate empty cars, where girls fear being targeted for harassment and assault. The schedule change also increases service on nights and weekends, so riders spend less time waiting on platforms.
Moving forward, BART will work with the Alliance for Girls in fiscal year 2024 to develop a youth-informed BART rider safety evaluation framework, as it pertains to sexual harassment, to define safety metrics and evaluation strategies that will guide BART’s preventative and interventional safety efforts.
BART will also develop and roll out training for frontline staff to give them tools on how best to handle situations involving riders experiencing trauma from harassment and gender-based violence, with a special focus on engaging marginalized community members.
Read more about the Not One More Girl initiative at BART
