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by Erustus Omondi, Migori Community Health Information Center
Reaching Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs) has been, for us, a very challenging task. Very proudly we are exited to announce the beginning of a helping relationship with them. The foundation of our success was built on an effort to understand this group of people. This, we did by way of an informal listening survey. The study, in part, revealed that:
- 90% of CSWs in Migori Town, a town at the Lake Victoria shores in Kenya, are — or pose as — bar attendants, and therefore, the most important places to work with them are the bars, restaurants and discotheques.
- The best way to reach them (CSWs) is through Pack 'N Go kits with the best time being slightly before they get to work (between 5pm and 7pm). The rationale behind this is that before 5pm they are busy getting ready for work while after 7pm, they are too busy to listen to anybody, other than a prospective client. The next time to catch them is during the day, but they are either busy sleeping or involved in other occupations like hairdressing, or hawking.
- They, too, need to be respected and prefer being referred to as waitresses or bar attendants than CSWs or worse still, prostitutes.
- The bar owners and managers need to be involved in any attempt to reach the CSWs.
With the above points in mind, we set the ball rolling on a publicity mission where we let the bar owners and managers know of the Community Health Information Centre and its services. Their role was to provide the institutional support while identifying the best times to reach their "employees."
It's quite encouraging that we recorded a positive response from the bar owners and managers. They believed that the center would be of great help to the CSWs who, they said, were suffering from an "acute deficiency of health information!" They identified unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases as the main health problems of the "bar workers."
The rest was like going down a steep hill. The various bar managements have called for Pack 'N Go and we have seen a few CSWs trickle into the Center in response to our outreach. At last! The iceberg has been broken, and we are set for a long-lasting, helping relationship with the CSWs.
Ultimately, we attribute the success of the intervention to WiRED's belief that the axis of an effective social marketing strategy evolves around beneficiary involvement and a sustained interest in education campaigns.
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