Sex Worker Advocacy Groups Share Funding Strategies at IAC

"If you can't get it through the door, you get it through the window!" With those words, Gabriela Silva Leite urged women attending the "Breaking Barriers" symposium organized by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in Mexico City to think creatively about financing to sustain their HIV/AIDS-related work. Silva Leite is the director of Davida-Prostitution, Civil Rights and Health, an NGO in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that focuses on promoting and defending the rights of sex workers.

When asked if the PEPFAR-related anti-prostitution pledge had negatively affected her organization's funding, Silva Leite remarked that all donors have their own specific policies and interests. Moreover, these can change over time so it is better for organizations not to depend on them but to seek more sustainable funding sources. Davida did this by creating a fashion label called Daspu; the sex workers collaborate with designers who translate their ideas into concrete fashions. Daspu now is featured in fashion magazines and forms part of the mainstream Brazilian fashion scene - this has also led to increased recognition and respect for the sex workers' organization.

At the same panel about making, tracking and spending money, Julia Kim described the IMAGE Project in South Africa, which has combined a micro-credit financing scheme for the poorest women in rural communities with an educational component focused on issues of HIV, violence, and gender bias. Comparative research between communities that only offered micro-credit and communities that included the gender empowerment component showed that both interventions tackled poverty but the latter also contributed to reducing HIV risks and gender equity.

A shared approach in the Brazilian and South African interventions was the linking of researchers and community-based organizations. Davida has worked with staff of a business school to develop Daspu as a business, rather than just a project. IMAGE has involved researchers in documenting and evaluating the cross-sectoral project in anticipation of scaling up the intervention.

A third panelist, Martha Kwataine, described how the Malawi Health Equity Network has worked with grassroots groups to help monitor national and district health budgets. She and others acknowledged that the type of evidence produced by groups such as IMAGE and Davida can help support advocacy on the importance of including gender empowerment and financing for women as essential components of strategies to address HIV/AIDS. We are seeing that women with economic resources are in a better position to confront situations that put them at risk - now we must ensure that macroeconomic policies incorporate investment for women as well.