Country of Residence
Nigeria
Age
18
Project title
Tell a Friend
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Tell a Friend is a confidential, verification based community safety system that allows serious safety concerns to be documented, reviewed and, where appropriate, responsibly shared so that people can make more informed decisions before entering potentially risky situations. It aims to prevent repeated harm while protecting privacy, due process and the rights of everyone involved.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
Project Category
My project is a brand new / emerging idea
Project Stage
Idea (We’re hoping to get started in the future)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
Founding Story The idea for Tell a Friend came from thinking about how often people experience harm, tell someone they trust, and then the story simply ends there. I began thinking about situations I have seen around me, especially involving students and people in positions of authority. There are times when people know that someone has behaved inappropriately or harmed others, but that information remains scattered between friends, classmates or individual complaints. The next person who encounters that same individual may have no idea what happened before. That made me imagine a simple situation. A woman is getting ready to meet someone for the first time. Her friend asks, “Have you checked Tell a Friend?” She searches the person's name and finds carefully reviewed safety information that could change how she approaches that situation. That was my “aha” moment. I realized that reporting harm should not only be about what happens after someone is hurt. If information can be documented and handled responsibly, it may also help prevent someone else from walking unknowingly into the same situation. I also realized that such a system could cause harm if it became a platform for false accusations, public shaming or mistaken identities. That is why Tell a Friend is built around verification, privacy, due process and responsible information sharing.The idea is simple:one person
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
People are often encouraged to report harassment, abuse, intimidation and other harmful behaviour, but information about these experiences can remain isolated with the person who experienced them. The next person who encounters the same individual may have no way of knowing what happened before. This matters because harm is not always a one-time event. A woman may unknowingly go on a date with someone who has previously harmed others. A student may enter an environment where other students have already experienced misconduct. A worker may encounter someone whose previous behaviour raised serious safety concerns. At the same time, simply putting people's names online is not a solution. False accusations, mistaken identities, retaliation, privacy violations and public shaming can create new harm. Tell a Friend addresses the gap between individual reporting and community safety. It asks how serious safety concerns can be documented, carefully reviewed and, where appropriate, responsibly shared so that people can make more informed decisions without turning the system into a public blacklist. This matters to me because I have seen how people can quietly carry harmful experiences while others remain unaware. I believe communities need ways to learn from those experiences while still protecting privacy, fairness and due process.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Tell a Friend is a confidential safetyinformation system where people can document serious concerns about harmful behaviour and have those reports assessed through a structured verification process. A report would not become public automatically. First, the system would protect the reporter's identity and collect only information necessary for the safeguarding purpose. The identity of the person being reported would then be carefully assessed so that reports are not incorrectly linked to someone with a similar name. Reports would be reviewed against defined evidence and safeguarding standards. Independent reports could help identify patterns, but the number of reports alone would never be treated as proof of guilt. The system would distinguish between an unverified report, corroborated safeguarding information and an authoritative finding where one exists. Where information meets a clearly defined threshold, only the minimum necessary safety information could be made available to users. The system would not publish home addresses, encourage public harassment or label people as criminals. People whose information is included would have a process for challenging mistaken identity and requesting correction or review. Reporters would also be able to access appropriate professional support and referral pathways. Tell a Friend would not replace the police, courts, schools or safeguarding organizations. It would provide an additional civic safety layer by responsibly connecting relevant information that would otherwise remain scattered between individuals. The first version would be a small, professionally guided pilot. The goal would be to test whether this model can improve access to safety information while protecting privacy and preventing misuse
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Tell a Friend is currently at the idea stage, so I am not claiming users or outcomes that do not yet exist. My first measure of impact would be whether the system can safely turn isolated experiences into useful, responsibly verified safety information. During an initial pilot, I would measure the number of people who are able to document concerns, the proportion of reports that can be appropriately verified, the number of successful referrals to professional support, how often identity or privacy concerns are detected and resolved, and whether users report feeling better informed about potential safety risks. I would also measure whether people understand the difference between an allegation and an established finding. This is important because the project's success should not come at the expense of another person's privacy or rights. In the longer term, I hope Tell a Friend can help people make more informed decisions before entering potentially risky situations and reduce the likelihood that serious patterns of harmful behaviour remain invisible to the people who may encounter them next. My first goal is not to build the biggest database. It is to prove that a safer model for documenting and sharing relevant information is possible, learn from its weaknesses and develop something communities can responsibly trust.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Tell a Friend is different because it is not designed as a public reporting wall, a social-media callout page or a simple database of accusations. Existing reporting systems often focus on documenting an incident for an institution after something has happened. Tell a Friend explores a different part of the problem: what happens to relevant safety information after the report, and whether it can responsibly help protect another person before harm occurs. The innovation is therefore not simply the technology. It is the combination of community reporting, identity verification, pattern recognition, privacy protection and responsible information-sharing in one safeguarding framework. A central feature is that a report does not automatically become a public record. Identity must be assessed, information must pass defined review standards and the system must distinguish allegations from corroborated information and authoritative findings. Tell a Friend would also build safeguards into the model from the beginning. These would include reporter protection, data minimization, restricted access to sensitive information, correction and appeal mechanisms, retention limits and professional oversight. This creates a different question from simply asking, "How do we expose bad people?" Tell a Friend asks, "How can communities share safety information without creating another system that can be used to harm people?" That balance between prevention and protection is what makes the concept different.
How many people are on your team?
1
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
I am currently the sole founder of Tell a Friend and would lead the project's research, concept development, community engagement and coordination. Because the project involves sensitive information, I would build a multidisciplinary team as it develops, including safeguarding, legal and data-protection, technology and community-engagement expertise. I would lead the project while ensuring that decisions requiring specialist knowledge are made with the appropriate professionals.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next three months, I would focus on turning Tell a Friend from an idea into a safe, testable pilot. First, I would speak with students, young adults, safeguarding professionals and potential users to understand how people currently document harmful experiences, what prevents them from reporting and what information they would actually find useful. I would then work with legal and data-protection professionals to establish privacy principles, consent procedures, data-retention rules, identity-verification requirements and a process for correction and appeal. A safeguarding specialist would help develop clear categories for reports and review standards so that allegations are never treated as established facts simply because they have been submitted. I would develop a prototype using fictional data rather than real people's information. This would allow the reporting, verification and review process to be tested safely. After testing, I would seek appropriate community and safeguarding partners for a small pilot. The pilot would measure usability, privacy, verification accuracy, user trust and whether participants find the information useful. The immediate goal is not nationwide expansion. It is to determine whether the model can work safely, identify its weaknesses and build evidence for responsible expansion.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
Tell a Friend is still at the idea stage, so I have not yet built a formal community around it. My first approach would be to involve people in designing the solution rather than simply asking them to support an idea that has already been decided. I would begin with student groups, women's groups, community organizations and safeguarding professionals. I would ask potential users what would make them feel safe reporting a serious concern, what information they would want before entering a potentially risky situation and what safeguards they would expect from a platform handling sensitive information. I would also use small discussions and educational content to explain the difference between responsible reporting and public accusation. The goal would be to encourage people to document experiences, protect privacy, avoid spreading unverified claims and use appropriate professional channels where necessary. As the project develops, people who participate in the research could become community advisers, pilot participants or volunteers. This would make Tell a Friend something built with the community rather than simply built for it. Ultimately, I want the phrase "Tell a Friend" to represent a culture of responsible information-sharing: when something serious happens, people should know how to document it safely and how that information might help protect someone else.
