Day 2: Aastha Paarivar

On Tuesday, we met with Kranti Mahila Sanstha, a community-based organization working under Aastha Paarivar (AP). Aaastha Paarivar is an umbrella organization run for and by sex workers that works "to address their common issues and needs such as health, human rights, crisis intervention, legal literacy, literacy and support their children."

Our class was asked to provide a brief training on menstruation, menopause and breast cancer. As the only International Development Studies student in class, this was really new territory for me. I was so impressed by the knowledge of the other women in our group and the straightforward way they delivered the information on our topics. I was struck too that our time felt like more of a conversation than a training. We were a group of women, worlds apart in many ways, talking and sometimes laughing about the topics that affect us all. I led a part of the discussion on breast cancer that included symptoms and how to conduct monthly self-checks. We got some excellent questions - How can you tell you have something that's on the inside by checking your outside? Why does it matter if my mother or sister has had breast cancer?

The conversation progressed beyond our planned topics and led to a demonstration on how to use a female condom. Here are Lindsey, Angela and Brooke leading the discussion with Angela posing as a cervix as public health students do:

Once we were done, our hosts wanted to present the training they provide to other women in the trade. Here are some pictures of one of the women making a presentation on how HIV/AIDS spreads. I was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of the materials, designed to explain the topic with pictures for women who aren't able to read. We were shown how with just one HIV+ person in the chain, all could become infected. The one thing I was concerned about, was that the initial HIV+ person was also the only transgendered person. I wondered if it could perhaps give the false impression that only transgendered people have HIV, which would really diminish the effectiveness and accuracy of the training!

What you may not be able to see on the "love garden" board above is the logo of FHI, a US-based organization. The Aastha project, out of which Aastha Paarivar was created, started in 2009 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With already 14 member organizations, the organization seems to be operating quite successfully (though it is still quite early in its existence and after some very brief research, I couldn't find much data on impact). I've worked at a US-based development NGO for the past 5 years and spend a lot of time thinking (sometimes angsting) about the efficacy of aid delivery. With recent books like Dead Aid and White Man's Burden, it's become trendy to dismiss the work of western governments and foundations as ineffective at best and harmful at worst. When we get home I plan to learn more about how Gates funding was used and how the project was designed - perhaps there are some lessons to be learned about the effective use of US funding.

I learned a lot that surprised me - like the fact that the women commute up to 90 minutes each way to work every day or that some had married their clients. Some said that they'd like to do something else, but that they wouldn't be able to support their families as they do now. One woman noted that her daughter had just finished her bachelor's degree and another was working at a bank. Many noted that their children were unaware of their profession.

After the presentations, we asked if they had any questions for us and naturally, they wanted to know why most of us weren't married. We assured them that many of our mothers wanted to know why too!