Hands Off II Sex work North Star Alliance
Hands Off II Sex work North Star Alliance
Project
North Star Alliance provides health services to sex workers at Road Wellness Clinics along the transport corridor. Under Hands Off North Star Alliance will continue to increase access to sex workers and build an inclusive, health-literate sex worker community. Peer educators will mobilise their peers to visit the clinic, and work with nurses to stimulate sex workers to make safe and healthy choices. Influential community member gathered in Crisis Response Teams will work to reduce stigma from the community and provide support to sex workers who experienced violence.
Project details
Ngodwana, Cato Ridge (South Africa), Beitbridge, Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) and Inchope (Mozambique)
Objectives
Hands Off II partners work to reduce violence against sex workers at community, national and regional level. Outcomes of North Star Alliance include increased access to and use of services for sex workers, as well as a more enabling environment for sex work.
Community groups
The programme’s primary target group is female, male and transgender sex workers, meaning those who receive money or goods in exchange for sexual services, either regularly or occasionally. North Star Alliance also works with influential community leaders.
Background
Structural barriers such as stigma, discrimination and criminalisation hinder sex workers to access comprehensive rights based services. In many cases sex workers rely on public health services, however these are often inaccessible for sex workers located outside of the urban areas.
The Hands Off study on Sex work & violence showed that 39 perfect of sex workers felt discriminated against in accessing health services.
Engaging the community in violence response systems
News, stories and resources from this project
A story of change: Creating communities of emergency responders
Partners
