Philly Truce is a community-led youth safety nonprofit in Philadelphia. They team up with local schools, families, and community members to deter youth violence through safety patrols, mentorship, and mediation.

Philly Truce’s goal is to create an app for students and trained Safe Path Monitors (SPMs) to document incidents in and around Philadelphia schools.

The reporting process is time-consuming and inefficient for SPMs. In addition, there is a “snitching” stigma associated with reporting incidences of violence among students, further hindering their goals.

In collaboration with the Penn Injury Science Center, the School District of Philadelphia tasked us with designing an incident management platform that simplifies the reporting process while keeping things anonymous, building trust and allaying students’ fears of being labeled a “snitch.”

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Challenge

Update the current antiquated system of reporting to simplify work for Safe Path Monitors (SPMs), make it easier for students to report potential incidences of violence.

The biggest challenge presented to us by the stakeholders was, simply, getting kids to trust this process, to see Philly Truce as a resource and not just a “snitch app.”