Home Safe is a new charity founded by 20-year-old Match Sienkiewicz that aims to get vulnerable people home safely by funding their taxi journeys.
Launching on 1 December, the service will carry a refund cap of £10 per journey and a usage cap of 2-3 times per month.
Home Safe will be an emergency service rather than a daily aid.
Sienkiewicz said: “Home Safe is a non-profit campaign. We gather donations to cover taxi journey’s for women, girls, anyone who needs us in London; any age, and gender.
“If they can’t afford to get an Uber or a Bolt, we are going to refund them as much as we can by them emailing us their receipt.
“My end goal with this is for it to be an official partnership with Uber or with Bolt.”
Sienkiewicz told SWL that he was moved to action after noticing that it was mainly women speaking publicly about women’s safety at night.
He said: “There needs to be something done by men, because at the end of the day it’s men that are creating the problem.
“It’s just about educating lads, we have to be educated. There is a massive amount of things that lads are not aware of purely through not being taught it.”
Sienkiewicz also spoke about the response the campaign has gathered so far. Since the Instagram page launched on 2 November, it has gained 23,400 followers and £5,403 in donations.
So far, Sienkiewicz’s success with Home Safe has largely been through his creative use of social media.
Employing the same tactics as 2020’s BLM campaign, Sienkiewicz encouraged Home Safe’s followers to post pink squares on their feeds and tag Transport For London to draw attention to the importance of reopening the full night tube network.
Despite the pink square campaign taking off, it was soon clear that TFL was untagging themselves from the posts – not the response Sienkiewicz’s hoped for maybe, but he definitely got someone’s attention.
A spokesperson for TFL said: “TfL is engaging with a number of well-established organisations, charities and academics, working in both the public safety and women’s sectors, about our work to make the network safer for everyone, and will continue to do so.
“We know that Night Tube is the highest priority for many of these organisations.”
TFL did not comment on removing the photo tags.
Sienkiewicz also spoke to SWL about the possibility of single people feeling unsafe when travelling in a taxi on their own.
He said: “We are going to have phone operators eventually so anyone can call them when they are in the Uber or while they’re waiting, just to have someone to talk to if they are worried or scared.”
For more information about Home Safe, and how you can get involved visit their Instagram page here.
You can donate to Homesafe’s campaign here.
