The issue of women's safety has touched upon the lives of women globally.
Recognising that more must be done to keep women safe in public and in unknown surroundings, a former Miss Derry had created her own business built on women's safety.
Zara Campbell is CEO of Northern Ireland’s very first safety and self-defence company of its kind, The Safe Yard, which creates items that would help give women peace of mind that they would be safe in their daily lives.
Talking to MyDerry, Zara said: " It only takes one look at the regional and national statistics for violence and sexual assault against women and marginalised genders to know there is a problem.
"Alongside this, there was absolutely no market or readily available tools to help young women and marginalised genders feel safe, reassured, or empowered to carry out the mundane tasks that many of us now are terrified to do.
"Until something changes on a much wider scale and more investments are made in actively uprooting misogyny, I want to be able to provide the products and tools to help individuals feel safe and prevent potentially dangerous situations from occurring."
Zara wanted to act after her own experiences of experiencing sexism and harassment, as well as the growing number of events of violence targeted towards women, to create this self-defence business.
She said: " I stumbled upon the idea after I learned the dangers of carrying out mundane tasks such as going for a walk and through my own experiences of sexual harassment when I moved away from home to study.
"Stabbings of female students in Belfast were occurring at this time and stories of drink spiking were on the rise again.
"Not only this but the endless headlines of women all over the UK becoming victims of misogynistic violence made me feel terrified and I knew something more had to be done for me to feel safe."
The Safe Yard offers a number of items for personal self defence, including a key chain alarm, a drink spike testing kit, an extra door lock and a non-toxic criminal identification spray.
Since establishing The Safe Yard, Zara has seen her business grow and achieved her business goals sooner than she could have ever expected.
Going forward, The Safe Yard will continue to keep women safe anywhere they go.
While more needs to be done to tackle violence against women, there is comfort to be taken in this woman-led, woman-oriented self-defence business ensuring that women can feel safer wherever they are.
Zara said: "My goal for The Safe Yard is to help make women feel safe globally.
"To do this I have a range of strategies and ideas in mind, something I would really like to do in the future is help create educational programmes that can be run in schools to help inform the next generations views.
"I am doing the best I can in providing products that could help prevent a potentially fatal outcome for someone out there, I created The Safe Yard because I want to help."
The Safe Yard can be found on Instagram, Facebook and on their website.
For more Derry news, visit our new site MyDerry.
