Improving Sex Worker Supports at Salal: Community Consultation
In 2018, Salal (then WAVAW) publicly apologized for a series of actions that caused harm to sex working communities. Since then, Salal has been committed to strengthening their relationship with sex workers. Part of this process involves meaningful engagement with sex working communities to determine how Salal can make support services more accessible, inclusive, and relevant to sex workers.
What We Are Doing
Salal is currently participating in a community consultation project to explore options for the creation of a sex worker-informed program. Our primary methods of consultation for this project involve the distribution of a community survey as well as key informant interviews with sex worker-lead community organizations and Salal staff. Through this consultation process, we hope to learn more about the context of feminist antiviolence and sex work, what needs sex workers might have from antiviolence organizations generally, and how Salal can best support these needs moving forward.
We plan to use the feedback shared with us to create concrete recommendations for specialized sex worker supports at Salal. In doing so, our intention is to resist the historic and ongoing anti-sex work bias in the feminist anti-violence sector by centering the perspectives of both current and former sex workers. We believe in the value of lived experience and we want to ensure that future support services are co-created with and for sex working communities.
How We Are Making Decisions
The survey responses we receive will provide us with a big-picture summary of our relationship with sex working communities while the key informant interviews will allow us to delve deeper into the specific supports sex working survivors would like to see from Salal. After compiling and reviewing the feedback we receive from each of these consultation pieces, we will identify the key themes that emerged. These themes will be discussed in detail in a forthcoming report alongside recommendations for improved service delivery.
High-level findings of this report will be shared publicly with the community and further opportunities for feedback will be provided.
The survey is now closed.
Visit this page to review ongoing updates as we review data collected.
Please note that participation in the survey was anonymous, and did not require you to disclose any personal information unless you wished to share your email address for future updates on this project.