As you’ve heard from the other bloggers, we visited Aastha Parivaar yesterday and gave a presentation on reproductive health to a group of Indian sex workers. It was an incredible opportunity to practice our real-world health promotion and education skills with an extremely at-risk population eager to learn. In most public health interventions or health education programs within the US, cultural differences often create a barrier to effectively communicate with different groups of people. That wasn’t the case at Aastha Parivaar. We were welcomed with smiles and there was an immediate sense of mutual respect.
Our presentation didn’t go quite as planned as we worked through the language barriers and gauged their expectations for our session. It showed how important it is to be flexible and really read your audience in order to get your message across. I’m not going to lie… I was a little nervous going in to the session. Not because I didn’t think our presentation was thoroughly researched or anything along those lines. It was more based on the fact that I’ve never given a reproductive or women’s health presentation before, and given our audience, I just didn’t know how it was going to go. Everyone did a fabulous job presenting the material in a positive, uplifting manner and really engaged the group…. even with the impromptu female condom demonstration. I was very surprised at how many educated questions we received from the women. It was clear that the work Aastha Parivaar has done thus far to educate and empower these women has been extremely effective.
During the introductions for the session, we learned that a lot of women in the group were peer educators and working on different health education topics themselves. When we completed our portion of the presentation, they showed us the different activities they use to inform other sex workers of the risk to their trade. It was clear that the main tenet to their health education is HIV prevention. They demonstrated how HIV can spread through a network of people as well as promoted getting tested for HIV.
As we waited for the bus we were able to sit down with a few women and ask more personal questions about working in the sex trade. It was extremely interesting to find out that these women are the bread winners in their families and therefore find supportive husbands waiting for them at home after they make the 20 kilometer trek into work 7 days a week. They prefer to keep their children unaware of the work they do so they don’t fall into the same circumstances. We asked why not look for some other form of income but unfortunately these women are discriminated against because of what they do. They also wouldn’t be generating the income they do now working anywhere else. Although they feel trapped within their trade, the group we spoke with was empowered through the education they receive from Aastha Parivaar and able maintain control of their bodies even within such a dehumanizing industry. I couldn’t help but leave with a sense of pride for our team of health educators. We're not only learning about Indian culture through experience but also how to work effectively as a team.
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