The Sex Workers Project provides client-centred legal and social services to individuals of any gender, age, nationality, income level or sexual orientation, who engage or formerly engaged in sex work regardless of whether they do so by choice, circumstance or coercion.
We share our expertise through legal education workshops for sex workers, we support sex worker-led organising and we pursue policy change aiming to make a real and demonstrable impact in the lives of our constituents. We also conduct human rights documentation rooted in the real life experiences of sex workers and survivors of trafficking. Occasionally we employ sex workers or former sex workers as interns or staff.
The two main challenges would be criminalisation and violence (a third would be poverty). Our clients suffer arrest, harassment and abuse by police officers, collateral consequences of having criminal records, including difficulties getting immigration status. Our clients also suffer high levels of violence and trauma including human trafficking which is compounded by the lack of legal recourse.
Our attorney’s help clients remain in stable housing, access safer working conditions and employment options, reunite their families, clear their criminal records, secure legal immigration status and fight police misconduct and hate crimes. Our social workers provide long term supportive therapy and case management. We also engage policy and media advocacy and research on issues affecting sex workers and victims of human trafficking.