Belfast City Hall will be lit up in pink this week as part of a walk aiming to highlight the dangers facing women and girls.
‘Project Pink’ is led by the Walkie Talkie Girlies society, a student group created to help young women feel safer when walking around Belfast.
The group was co-founded by Aisling Cannon (20) from Co Donegal. The Queen’s University Belfast law student says the society grew from her own experience when she felt unsafe walking back from the city centre one evening.
“I was trying to get home from town one night and I’d only been living in Belfast for two months at this point,” she explains.
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“My bus kept getting cancelled and I couldn’t get a taxi. When I was standing at the bus stop a man approached me and asked where I was going, where I lived and what bus I was taking.
“They were questions that made me feel a bit uncomfortable and reminded me that I was quite vulnerable in that moment.”
Aisling eventually approached another group of girls and asked if she could walk back with them.
“Two of the girls insisted that they walk me down to my accommodation to make sure I got home safely, even though that took them out of their way,” she says.
“That moment was defining for me because I realised that’s what students need.
“You feel safer when you’re in a group - especially women, which is where the idea for Walkie Talkie Girlies came from.”
Aisling co-founded the group with her friend and fellow law student Georgia Salmons (22).
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In the last year, it has grown from a community of young women who walked together for safety to fundraising for women’s causes and empowering women in their group to take control of their personal safety.
“Initially we were so surprised, the fact that we already had 80 people sign up before we even had our first walk was crazy to us - it’s a huge number,” says Aisling.
“And this wasn’t just people signing up on a Google doc - this is a paid membership because as a new society we have to have a small membership fee because we don’t have any funding.”
Since the group’s formation in 2023 it has garnered more than 400 members and 2,600 Instagram followers.
It has also partnered with other organisations dedicated to empowering and protecting women including, Nexus, Safe Night NI, Menstruation Matters and most recently Glow NI.
Project Pink will see society members, charity representatives and activists don their “most pink outfit” and walk from Queen’s University, which will also be lit up in pink, into the city centre.
In September the executive launched a strategic framework to End Violence Against Women and Girls, Aisling says it was this initiative that originally inspired the project.
“We started organising it at the start of September and at the time it was really just an event to raise awareness of the new strategy as we felt it was needed.”
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When the group initially applied for permission to light up City Hall, they were turned down by the council, but recent headlines motivated them to push for the walk to go ahead.
“After the horrific events which have occurred over the last month it became more about that, and we decided we wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
In October, police launched a murder investigation after the body of Mary Ward was found in south Belfast, making her the fourth woman to be murdered in six weeks in Northern Ireland. The body of the 22-year-old was discovered by officers at her Melrose Street house on October 1.
“The current situation is really concerning for young people,” adds Aisling.
“And it’s really important to raise those issues and to express your frustration and concern about what’s going on because that’s the only way that they’ll get solved.”
But she hopes that in addition to raising awareness and campaigning to end violence against women and girls Walkie Talkie Girlies will also, “highlight how young women can make change”.
“It’s about shifting the focus onto a more positive light while also dealing with these issues head on as well.”
There are more than 160 people confirmed to attend Project Pink on November 6. The group will meet in the foyer of the QUB Students’ Union from 6pm. More information @walkietalkiegirlies on Instagram
