Why We Need Data, Courage, and Community

British Embassy Skopje offers its blog platform for guest posts. The views expressed in the guest posts are those of the authors and are not the position of the UK Government.

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundless action.”

– Hannah Arendt

Every November, during the 16 Days of Activism, my social media fills with the familiar orange graphics, reminders, slogans. And yet, for many women and girls, the 16 days blur into the other 349, because the walk home is still calculated, the footsteps behind still analysed, and the “text me when you get home” still whispered far too often.

At Reactor – Research in Action, this doesn’t come as a revelation. It comes as a dataset. As an over a decade-long memory. As a stubborn commitment. As an ongoing story of learning and acting.

This year is special for us. Reactor turned 20. We mark two decades of insisting research is truly useful when it moves and intervenes in the world – spills into streets, policies, institutions, classrooms, bus stops, youth centres, and, increasingly, digital spaces. We put that conviction in our name before it became a fashionable development slogan. We chose it because it demanded something from us. And we’ve tried to live up to it ever since.

A Project Older Than the Hashtags

Our work on safety in public spaces is a great example. When Reactor conducted the first study on in 2012, supported by the UN Women, the political climate was different. Yet, the stories we heard were the same ones that would later fuel global movements: fear, avoidance, coping strategies, shame. Most striking was the normalisation, the quiet acceptance of “that’s just how it is.”

This planted a seed that refused to stay dormant. Over the years, we have revisited, re-measured, and re-engaged communities, institutions, activists, and especially young people in a continuous effort that never fits neatly into donor cycles. More than a decade later, with the support of the UK Government through Kvinna till Kvinna, this commitment remains, and we are still pushing the conversation, the data, and the accountability further.

Our youth-centred approach underpins our mission and broader work on civic engagement, feminist leadership, and social justice. By engaging youth as co-researchers, storytellers, and data mappers, we are shaping safer environments and stronger, more active citizens. Safety in public spaces is not only a women’s issue, but also a youth, and democracy issue, reflected in the barriers young women face in education, work, transport, and nightlife.

Our re-launched platform http://www.reagiraj-bidibezbedna.mk, designed and maintained by Reactor, offers young women a simple but powerful tool – a place to say, “This happened, and it matters,” a digital space to share experiences and be heard.

The platform embodies the core principles of participatory research in practice and turns passive data subjects into active contributors, treating public safety as a shared commonality, and weaving lived experiences into institutional response. Knowledge becomes transformative when those most affected become its authors and hold the pen, the camera, the map. Research has real power not when it observes communities, but when it works with them.

Can a Website Change Society? Yes, If It Changes the Conversation.

The platform is not a replacement for police reporting. It will not deliver justice in a single click nor prosecute offenders. It will not rebuild streetlights overnight. But it can, and does, shift the public narrative. It crowdsources knowledge, it exposes, challenges stereotypes, and encourages to report behaviours that have been taught to minimise or normalise. It helps build confidence and collective courage.

Change is rarely dramatic at first. It is often cumulative:

A young woman reports something she would have kept to herself.
Another realises she is not alone.
A teacher uses the map in a workshop.
A journalist writes a story.
A policymaker asks for the data.
A police officer reflects differently on the next case.
A neighbourhood observes their own streets.
A city begins to question norms it once accepted.

This is how structural change grows.

Predictive policing, gender-sensitive responses, effective interventions cannot happen if we operate in separate worlds. Lasting change requires institutional allyship and a shared commitment. Cooperation with the Ministry of Interior is necessary, not optional. It isn’t easy or perfect, but it is indispensable. And the UK Government’s support has driven this forward, proving that diplomacy can secure more than dialogue – safer streets and stronger communities.

Recent years have not been easy – at home, in the region, or globally. Rising anti-gender narratives, shrinking space, and political fragmentation have intensified the work and amplified backlash, but also made cross-border solidarity more essential.

From Skopje to Brighton: A Personal Note

This work has a personal dimension for me. As a Chevening Scholar pursuing a master’s degree in Power, Participation and Social Change at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, I’m immersed in theories and practices that have shaped social movements across the UK and the world. Being here has sharpened my understanding of how participatory approaches, in post-Brexit Britain or post-transition North Macedonia, can shift relationships between citizens, institutions, and public space.

Walking through Brighton on a foggy evening and stumbling upon a poster for Reclaim the Night transports me back to our march in 2016 in Skopje, the same energy, the same refusal to accept fear as normal, the insistence that public space belongs to us.

Encountering initiatives like Our Streets Now and Cheer Up Luv, I recognise clear parallels with our work in photovoice, testimonies, and visual campaigning. The UK’s long trajectory of feminist activism, from safety apps to street audits to survivor-led awareness efforts, echoes many of the solutions we cultivate at home.

This cross-pollination matters. It deepens the sense of connection and renews the energy. It also reminds me of a simple truth: safety is never just about fear, it is about freedom, dignity, access, and belonging. And that progress is rarely linear; everywhere, we navigate the same tensions between visibility and silence, voice and backlash.

Reactor’s anniversary deepens this perspective and proves that persistence matters, that ethical and community-rooted research can reshape culture.

Societies only change when their people do. And safety only becomes real when we choose it, together.