Building SWs community capacity: strategic planning and training of the CO “Legalife-Ukraine” for leaders’ 2024

In order to achieve the main advocacy goals of the community - decriminalisation and recognition of sex work as work, equal rights and accessible and quality services for sex workers, safe working conditions and protection in everyday life - we do everything to develop the overall capacity of the community and personal growth of each of its activists and leaders.

Unfortunately, today there is a general tendency to reduce donor funding for programs to support the mobilisation and training of sex workers. Partners insist on conducting online trainings instead of offline.

We consider such training to be ineffective, except in cases where there is no alternative method.

Conducting online trainings makes it difficult to engage activists in participation, it does not promote emotional connection between participants, between participants and trainer, and makes it difficult to keep attention on the subject of study or discussion. Lack of technical means and stable internet connection is also a barrier to online participation for many sex workers. All this reduces the effectiveness of the events.

Therefore, we are making efforts to find additional opportunities and hold meetings with the community and training events in a face-to-face format.

7 months of 2024 have already passed - during this time, many events of the CO “Legalife-Ukraine” have been held for activists and community leaders. Read on to find out what exactly happened and what the results were.

STRATEGIC PLANNING OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FOR 2024-2026

The latest community development plan was developed for 2021-2023. COVID and the war have made adjustments to our plans and activities - and this could not but affect the results and achievement of the goals set by the community.

Under martial law, some advocacy goals temporarily became simply impossible or irrelevant for the community, because first and foremost, all of us had to survive, not to break down and learn to function in new difficult, sometimes unbearable, conditions. And we managed to do it.

So it’s not all bad. The community has fulfilled some of the tasks of the strategic plan, and what it has not done will become a goal for the coming years.

This year, traditionally, Hanna Shevchenko, our good friend, coach and professional, helped us with planning, guided us and inspired us.

Hanna Shevchenko

The team’s task was to assess the status of implementation of the strategic community development plan for 2021-2023 and develop a strategic community development plan for 2024-2026, taking into account the current challenges faced by the sex workers community in the context of war and the increased vulnerability of sex workers to violence and human rights violations, as well as to develop action plans for the sex workers community in response to these challenges.

Hanna knows how to set us up for productive work - during the planning process, we used brainstorming with appropriate analysis of the results, moderated discussions, mini-messages, individual and group work.

During the brainstorming session, participants had the opportunity to express their own vision of the future: "How do you see the future of the organisation in 3-5 years?", "How do you want others to see you?", "Why do you want to do certain things?", "How will you achieve the goal?", "What does the organisation want to achieve in the future, how should it look like?".

As a result of the two-day work, an action plan for the development of the organisation was developed: priorities were identified, necessary measures were proposed, the main tasks of the activity were outlined and target groups for decision-making were identified.

TRAINING WORKSHOP FOR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE SEX WORKER COMMUNITY IN UKRAINE: "STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES IN NATIONAL AND REGIONAL COUNCILS FOR COORDINATION OF ACTIONS IN RESPONSE TO THE SPREAD OF TUBERCULOSIS AND HIV/AIDS"

The idea of conducting this kind of training logically followed from the community’s need for effective representation of their interests at the state level. We must learn to defend our ideas about sex workers programs and seek state funding for their implementation!

Lyubov Kravets and Iryna Koroeva, representatives of the Secretariat of the National Council on HIV, gladly agreed to share their experience to increase the competence of our leaders in advocacy and strengthen their capacity to influence national and local processes in the field of public health, HIV prevention, etc.

 Iryna Koroyeva  Liubov Kravets

The participants of the training had several tasks:

• Strengthen theoretical and practical knowledge of the regulatory and procedural framework for public participation in decision-making and interaction with the authorities.
• Identify the key goals and objectives of community participation in the work of the National and regional/local councils on TB and HIV.
• Present algorithms of advocacy activities at the national and regional levels.
• To develop skills of communication and advocacy activities within the framework of the work of the National and regional/local councils on TB and HIV.
• Master the tools for planning, implementing and evaluating measures to strengthen the effectiveness of community representatives in the work of advisory bodies of state authorities.

Sometimes learning is a lot of fun. The trainers Iryna and Liubov know how to unload your brain and energise you!

Time will tell whether the participants of the training were able to complete their tasks in full. We want programs to support sex workers to start operating in every region! We hope that the results of our leaders’ advocacy and changes for the better will be felt by sex workers across Ukraine.

TRAINING FOR COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVES "ASSESSMENT OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN SEX WORK REGULATION"

In order to influence changes in legislation in Ukraine and get chance to participate in the development of new policies on sex work, it is necessary to understand international legislation and study the experience of other countries in regulating sex work.

Therefore, we gathered our activists to raise their awareness of the forms of sex work regulation in the world, to discuss the results of research on the consequences of these types of sex work regulation and their impact on the lives, safety and well-being of sex workers around the world.

Group work helped to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the main types: criminalisation, legalisation, the Swedish model and decriminalisation of sex work. The participants reviewed the experience of European countries, USA and New Zealand.

Based on the materials studied, the activists offered their vision and key recommendations on what sex work reform in Ukraine should look like.

The training was followed by a consultation meeting with the community on legislative reform and the development of proposals for decriminalising sex work in Ukraine. As a result of the meeting, a list of socially significant areas to be addressed by the reform and proposals for desirable positive and undesirable negative changes in these areas were compiled. Proposals from the community will be used in the process of developing draft laws on decriminalisation of sex work in Ukraine and advocating for them.

TRAINING FOR ACTIVISTS "COMMUNITY-LED MONITORING: THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES IN DATA COLLECTION AND USE"

Sergiy Myroniuk, Chief Specialist of the Project Management and International Activities Department of the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine (Центр Громадського Здоров’я МОЗ України), undertook to raise the level of knowledge of representatives of the SWs community in matters of development and the importance of community-led monitoring in Ukraine.

Sergiy Myroniuk

There were many requests from the community to the trainer:

  -  To inform representatives of the SWs community about the main definitions, principles, tasks, areas of use of data of the International Criminal Court (ICC)  in Ukraine (Міжнародний Кримінальний Суд в Україні);

  - Raise awareness of the role of communities in collecting ICC data;

  -  To introduce the ICC tools that are used/could be used by key communities in Ukraine;

  -  To outline the main vectors of the ICC development in Ukraine on the example of the developments and directions of work of the thematic subgroup on the use of the ICC in Ukraine

  -  Involve representatives of SWs community in the process of identifying ICC tools that are significant for the community.

This is not to say that it was easy, but the discussion of real cases from the experience of our activists and the trainer, as well as the participation of the community in annual data collection for monitoring services in the regions, helped the participants to master the topic.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING. MENTAL HEALTH. SUBORDINATION. HEALTHY BOUNDARIES. FORMATION OF THE INTERNAL SELF. METHODS OF SELF-HELP. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN MANAGEMENT

Training on burnout prevention is the most relevant nowadays. It was probably the most enjoyable event, given the psychological stress of recent years and the conditions in which our leaders are working.

The training led by Olena Vertynska was a breath of air, the warmth of hugs and smiles, an opportunity to break away from everyday problems and plunge into your inner world, while opening up to others. We thank the coach for new knowledge and practices!

Olena Vertynska

We did a lot of things these days. Participants tested their own boundaries, learned to work with emotional intelligence, understand their emotions and deal with them. They even touched on the practice of kinesiology and tried to listen to their bodies, which can answer any question about what is good or bad for us.

TRAININGS FOR PARTNERS

Sometimes we train not only our activists. Natalia Isayeva and Olena Fiskova conducted a 3-day training for staff of NGOs working with SWs on a peer-to-peer basis.

The main topic was countering violence - how it changes a person and limits access to services. They also discussed how to engage and work with sex workers in harm reduction and HIV prevention programs, how to move from theory to practice. It is good that the trainers know firsthand everything about the community, its behavioural characteristics, needs and problems, and they were happy to share their experience with the participants.

The training resulted not only in new knowledge, but also in partnerships.

We are grateful to our partners for their support of sex workers in Ukraine: ActionAid, Global Fund for Women, SWAN, NSWP, SCALE, CO "100 PERCENT LIFE" and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Team CO “Legalife-Ukraine”