Hyderabad: From school buses to buses for after-school activities, the Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) is looking to widen its Student Mobility programme as it enters its third decade. SCSC, a police-industry partnership, began by focusing on women’s safety and has since expanded into cybersecurity, road safety, and child and youth safety. As it marks 20 years on Sunday, its focus is now on expanding that work among the next generation.Among the ideas in the works is a trusted transport system for children heading to extracurricular activities after school. “We don’t want to limit the solution to the mobility problem with children reaching school. There are many children whose parents are at work in the evening and who may not have anyone to take them to tuition, sports or other activities. If we can create a trusted transport system connecting them to these activities, it can give children more options instead of leaving them at home with no alternative,” SCSC CEO Naveed Alam Khan told STOI.SCSC is working with a startup to develop technology connecting parents, transport operators and activity providers. It is also exploring the involvement of self-help groups and other community workers as attendants to help children travel between their homes and bus stops, with police verification being considered as part of the proposed safety mechanism. “We have also written to the Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC) to help us provide sanitation workers who, during off-shift hours can pick up and drop these kids off at the bus station. We have already collaborated with RTC to ferry the buses,” Naveed said.The evening service is an extension of SCSC’s broader Student Mobility Initiative, which is already in its pilot phase. Two TGSRTC buses have been deployed at two schools, one in BHEL and the other in Petbasheerabad, with SCSC assessing the response from parents and students. The larger plan is to create shared, route-based transport for school clusters, with staggered timings also being explored so a single bus can serve multiple institutions.Student safety is another area SCSC wants to expand. Its existing ‘Suraksha Kavach’ programme runs student-led safety clubs covering physical safety, cyber safety, mental wellbeing, and road and infrastructure safety, with guidance material and links to police and other experts. The programme has reached more than 250 schools, but only around 40-45 currently have active clubs, according to the Youth Forum. SCSC plans to introduce ‘Suraksha Sathis’ and ‘Suraksha Mitras’ to strengthen the clubs and ensure continuity as student office-bearers graduate.Sathis will be representatives within institutions, while Mitras will provide external support to three to four institutions each. They will follow a “Recognise, Respond, Refer” approach, identifying concerns and connecting students with the appropriate support rather than handling cases themselves. “The safety clubs have to continue even when one batch of students leaves and another takes over. The Sathis and Mitras are being planned as a support system so that the clubs remain active and the work does not stop with a change in student office-bearers,” said Vanitha Datla, who heads SCSC’s Youth Forum.Separately, SCSC is seeking a broader framework for student safety through the education department. Datla said existing arrangements address specific concerns – such as Prahari Clubs for drug-abuse awareness and UGC-mandated anti-ragging committees in colleges – but do not cover the wider range of safety issues faced by students. “There are already mechanisms for specific concerns, but we don’t see a comprehensive approach covering the entire spectrum of student safety. We have approached the education department and hope that, through the Cyberabad commissionerate and SCSC, we can recommend a framework and guidelines for wider implementation across educational institutions from KG to PG, including coaching centres,” Datla said.
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