During the welcome dinner, Grace Kamau, African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA) Regional coordinator remarked that the next 7 days would be be jam-packed with eye-opening thought leadership,capacity building, advocacy and vibrant, in-depth debate on sex work movement building in the African Continent.To build the capacity of sex worker-led groups in Africa, to promote and implement the Sex Worker Implementation Tool (SWIT) and advocate for sex worker’s human rights and promote rights-based community-led services.In addition the Academy aims to to strengthen skills of community leaders to participate meaningfully and intervene on policy changes and issues impacting people in sex work at the local, national and regional level.
She alluded that the academy and the partnership thereof would elevate African sex workers voices and priorities both on the global and regional scale. She encouraged all the participants and ASWA members in Africa to keep their eyes peeled in the coming days for the release of the updates of the proceedings of the Academy.
She added that the academy was committed to ensuring that sex work programming best meets sex work goals, partnership and all related sex work development activities.
The Academy would be 7-days long starting on 23rd to 29th November 2020 and will involve female, male and transgender sex workers. The academy will be facilitated by a team of dedicated and passionate trained faculty members who are also sex workers. The Training of SWAA pioneer faculty team occurred in 2014. The SWAA academy will train averagely 18 sex workers from 3 different African countries- Rwanda, Uganda Kenya. The SWAA curriculum is drawn from SWIT (Sex Work Implementation Tool) and it has ten modules.
She thanked all the participants for joining the Academy, for their engagement, partnership, and their dedication and she hoped to see more cross-sector collaboration which would build the sex work movement building and also enhance sex workers lives.
About The Author
