VeiligSamen for neighbourhood watch schemes

Alongside your neighbourhood group, not instead of it

A neighbourhood group is a conversation. You type what you see, someone replies, and the rest read it when it suits them. That is exactly right for "someone is walking along the cars here" or "who has a trailer".

At the moment you need help yourself, a conversation stops working. You have to unlock your phone, find the right group, type what is happening and where you are, and hope somebody is looking. VeiligSamen replaces that with one button you hold for two seconds: neighbours within 500 metres are alerted at once, with the distance and a pin on the map, and whoever can come says so.

So the two complement each other. Keep the group for everything that can wait, and use the app for what cannot.

See how it works

When to use which

A simple rule of thumb you can agree on in your street:

• Call 112 if there is immediate danger, or if police, fire or ambulance are needed. That always comes first.
• Hold the SOS button when you want someone from nearby with you *now* — you feel unsafe, you have fallen, there is someone at your door.
• Send a message in the neighbourhood group for anything that can wait: a sighting, a found bicycle, a request.

What coordinators should know

If you run a watch scheme or a neighbourhood group, you are used to membership lists, administrators and boundaries. VeiligSamen has none of those, and that is deliberate. It saves you work, but it also means there are things you cannot do with it.

• There is no admin panel. In this first version you cannot create a group, invite anyone or configure anything on someone else's behalf.
• There is no membership list. You cannot see who in your street has the app, and nobody can see that about you. Who takes part stays private.
• Everyone is equal. There are no administrators and no privileged accounts; every user can do the same things.
• The radius is the boundary, not your area's map. An alert goes to everyone within 500 metres, including someone just outside your patch — and that is usually exactly who you want. If nobody responds, the circle grows by itself to 2 kilometres, so beyond your area's edge as well.
• Alerts carry no names. So you do not know who sent one, only where and how far away.

Read what we do with your data

How many neighbours do you need

There is no minimum, but the app is exactly as useful as the number of neighbours who have it. A handful of households in the same street is already enough: whoever is home at that moment and had the app open receives your alert.

If there is nobody within 500 metres, your alert says so honestly — "Nobody alerted yet" — and the app keeps looking in a widening circle, up to 2 kilometres. If that turns up nobody either, the alert stays open, so someone who comes into the area later can still see it. The more people take part, the smaller that chance becomes. Which is why it pays to introduce the app together, once, rather than quietly installing it on your own.