Picture this: you’ve finally decided to get back in the dating scene. You got all dressed up, put on your favorite lipstick, and made your way to the date. Now you’re there, and it’s awkward. They’re weird, saying questionable things, and you can’t stop thinking about how badly you want to escape. In comes my absolute favorite app: Zich App!
Zich App is a personal safety mobile app that has been designed to help solve that feeling we’ve experienced of feeling unsafe or even just awkward situations (hi, weird date!).
Let’s break down some of Zich App’s neat features:
- Alerts: The app has two alert options: orange and red. An orange alert is a message that isn’t urgent, but you want to let someone know what’s going on. A red alert is much more urgent and you need help immediately. You can tap and hold your finger on the “Alert” button and release it if you feel any sort of threat.
- Recorder: You can record audio or video of up to 2 minutes to be sent to your open incident.
- Fake caller (my favorite feature and the one minute version is free to use without a subscription): You can set a specific time to have a fake number call you, like 1, 5, and 10 minutes—you can even add a custom time! This can definitely get you out of awkward situations really easily.
Another thing that I love is that you can set up connections based on people who live with you (called The Heart Circle) and people who live in your general area (The Life Circle). This can help you prioritize who can help in what kind of situation based on who it is and how quickly they usually answer your “Please save me from this annoying guy at the bar” text.
You can even automatically share your live location and emergency information with your selected circles. This is a great feature if you’re, for example, driving to pick up something you bought online from someone nearby.
Let’s be real for a moment here. We spend a lot of our time on social media sharing how amazing it is to travel, go to bars, and honestly just doing anything outside. What we don’t talk enough about is our own personal safety. As a woman with an irrational amount of anxiety, I am no stranger to feeling unsafe in an environment.
Across the world, vulnerable communities are being threatened every single day. In India alone, there is a rape reported every fifteen minutes, while countless remain unreported. Globally, 1 in 3 women are physically assaulted at some point in their life and unfortunately, I ran out of fingers to count how many times I’ve been assaulted. This is why personal safety is so important to me.
Even though I see benefits with the app as a woman, it can also help anyone who needs to feel safe: minorities, LGBTQ+, college students, and even the elderly living alone. Their ultimate goal is to create a Global safety network—the world’s first community-based personal safety solution.
Most safety platforms we use today, like 911, were created when telephones were just becoming a household thing. While they were revolutionary, these platforms haven’t been updated with the current technological changes and advancements over the years.
Zich App’s vision is to bring your community together, providing us with the tools we need to help one another.
The monthly subscription pricing is $2.99 in the US and most developed countries. It’s even lower, at $0.99 a month for developing countries. They also have a one-for-one pledge: for every person that subscribes to the app, they will give free access to one user who cannot afford it. It’s such a great way to make the app so accessible to all walks of life. Click the links below to download based on your phone:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zich/id1552565537
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sahas.sahas
