KIASWA Establishment / Challenges / Lessons Learned

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ESTABLISHMENT AND ROLES OF KIASWA

KIASWA is a sex workers led organization based in kiambu county with the focus of providing sexual reproductive health services to the female sex workers, lesbian sex workers, trans-gender sex workers, male sex workers and sex workers who use or/and inject drugs mainly in kiandutu and githogoro slums of kiambu county. The group has been advocating for the human rights issues and sexual reproductive Health well-being of sex workers and their children in Kiambu County to scale up services for their clients and beneficiaries. KIASWA has been collaborating with other partners like LEHA where we refer our sex workers who also identify as lesbians as well as CRSW where we refer male sex workers for comprehensive services other than Bio-medical

ORGNIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES

KIASWA was formed in 2014 and legally registered in 2017 after discovering that there was need to establish an organization that could offer sex worker’s tailored services with sex workers at heart. Below are our objectives;

  1. Strengthen the capacity of Sex Workers groups who have never received any funding and or limited funding.
  2. Reduce Sex Workers, Trans* risks and vulnerability to HIV/STI .
  3. Reduce and address stigma, discrimination, violence and other human rights violations against Sex Workers, Trans*and AGYW by accelerating advocacy targeting Law enforcers, Health Care Workers, Business Community-Bar/hotspot owners and managers.
  4. Strengthen Sex Workers, Trans* and AGYW Economic empowerment to enhance their potential to contribute to financial stability, increase resilience, and prevent HIV/AIDS
  5. Strengthen KIASWA institutional capacity to implement, manage, monitor, evaluate and improve the quality of grant implementation and management

  1. Beauty Wednesday. which sees sex workers come for beauty services such as hair dressing, curl kit, dread making, dread retouch, facials, nails every Wednesday as they get HTS services, STI screening and treatment, Violence intervention, PrEP, PEP, referral for Care and Treatment, family planning, condom education and provision, Mental health screening and alcohol and drug screening.
  2. Art advocacy. KIASWA knows that behind every sex worker, there is always a story of frustration that involves violence. Thus, we have established art advocacy Friday that see sex workers express the frustrations that they still carry that resulted from violence from police, clients and community members at large.
  3. 516, sex workers enrolled in the program.
  4. 398 sex workers reached HTS services.
  5. 186 sex workers sensitized on entrepreneurship and awaiting to resource mobilize and start income generating activities.
  6. Sensitized police officers from the 12 sub counties of Kiambu and this has seen number of arrests drop.
  7. Sensitized health care providers on stigma and discrimination against sex workers and this has seen high numbers of new enrollments.

LESSONS LEARNED

  1. With appropriate innovations, it is possible to reach out to many peers with minimal resources.
  2. With enough funding to support several innovations, a lot can be achieved.
  3. 4 out of every 10 sex workers are always high on alcohol or/ and other drugs.
  4. Sex workers travel kilometers to get septrin procured by KIASWA.

CHALLENGES FACES

  1. Not less than 5 GBV cases in a day with no funds to support advocacy.
  2. Mental health issues with some sex workers attempting to commit suicide.
  3. Lack of enough funding to support daily running of the clinic.
  4. Lack of STI drugs which are highly needed.
  5. Lack of cervical cancer screening commodities.
  6. Overwhelming numbers and limited resources.
  7. Need for masks and sanitizers.
  8. Lack of adequate Septrin to our HIV positive peers.
  9. Lack of stationed doctor on a daily basis.
  10. Lack of coaches for our member forcing them to sit on condom boxes as they wait to get services.

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