From student voices to citywide action: How we’re making the city safer

With over 2600 survey responses highlighting personal accounts of harassment, harm and sexual assault in Wellington, alongside concerns from local community groups and a rally called ‘LetUsLive’ that was spearheaded by the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence (WAASV), Wellington City Council responded by prioritising sexual violence prevention at a local government level. 

Here are some of the initiatives that we’ve been working on recently. 

City Safety & Wellbeing Plan

The City Safety & Wellbeing Plan is our renewed approach to safety in Wellington, which highlights the multitude of ways we hope to make the city feel safer and enhance the experiences for everyone who lives, works and plays in Wellington. Under this new plan, we will be using the Council's Sexual Violence Action Plan and Roadmap to guide our work towards a city free from sexual violence.  

Safer Venues Project 

The Safer Venues Project is a partnership between Hospitality NZ, RespectEd Aotearoa and the Council to take a purposeful and holistic approach to preventing sexual harm in our licensed venues. The training programme is funded by the Council, with Hospitality NZ (HNZ) and RespectEd as the delivery partners working directly within venues. This programme is now available through HNZ, with the first series of workshops being delivered this week.  

It focuses on training front of house teams to spot harmful sexual behaviours and venues to be confident in identifying and responding to sexual harm. Further workshops are being scheduled throughout the coming year and will be available to book via the HNZ website What's On. 

Direct support to frontline service

The Council funds a number of response services, crisis support, advocacy and prevention organisations who work directly in the sexual violence sector, including: 

• Wellington HELP – Wellington HELP provides specialist support services to people who have experienced sexual harm including people under the age of 18.
• Wellington Rape Crisis – Wellington Rape Crisis provides specialist support services to people who have experienced sexual harm in the Wellington region. 
• RespectEd Aotearoa – RespectEd is the prevention arm of Wellington’s sexual violence sector, facilitating training on healthy workplace culture. 

The Council also funds a number of one-off grants for services and projects, such as: 

• The Road Forward – a survivors sexual violence service specific to men and rainbow communities. 
• Alo Fā – a Pasifika specific sexual violence service. 

Pōneke Prevention Practitioners Network 

The network intends to provide prevention practitioners and people working in the broader sexual violence space an opportunity to connect with others and facilitate kōrero that enhances our work. 

The network consists of members from the New Zealand Defence Force, ACC, Te Puna Aonui, NZ Rugby, RespectEd Aotearoa, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa and several independent people. 

Student safety

Alongside the work under the City Safety & Wellbeing Plan, the Council works annually with student associations and universities to prioritise harm reduction and prevention messaging to new and returning tertiary students during O-week. The Safer Pathways Project saw strategic placement of consent messaging decals along popular student routes from campus into the central city.

The Council also distributed a series of Welcome to Welly magazines and videos to new students that contained key safety messaging, and quick click links to sexual harm support services and late-night services, such as Take10’s safe zone on Courtenay Place.

Learn more about the Council’s approach to city safety on our website.