WISH is a drop-in centre offered exclusively to women in the survival sex trade. About 100 women come to the drop-in each night for dinner, a shower, access to free clothing, supplies and make-up, a consultation with the street nurse or just to relax in front of the TV before they go back to the streets. Three nights a week, about 10-20 women make their way to the WISH Learning Centre, which has been operating since 1999 in partnership with Capilano College. Here they can read, do crafts, work on the computer, get individualized help with courses such as high-school upgrading, participate in workshops, or write for the quarterly newsletter.
Capilano College has been operating the learning centre at WISH for eight years, and when the opportunity came for us to work with the Lifeskills Centre, it seemed like complimentary work. Both organizations seek to serve people who are “hard to serve” — marginalized, victimized, criminalized, stigmatized and not accessing mainstream services. Many women who use WISH at night go the Lifeskills Centre during the day, to participate in the Women’s Wellness group, art workshops, grief and loss groups, meetings of Sex Workers Action Group or the various community kitchens. Also, both organizations have a common approach to working with drug users and sex trade workers: they do not require them to be “in recovery,” “exiting the sex trade,” or even not using drugs — everyone is welcome in whatever state. So because of that, both organizations are excellent places to investigate the links between Harm Reduction and Learning. Recognizing these facts sheds light on the pragmatism of harm reduction.
Our research builds on previous research done by Capilano College and the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, called Literacy for Women on the Street (Alderson & Twiss, 2003). This report describes a journey three educators and a group of learners took to discover: "How can literacy activities empower and stabilize the lives of women in the sex trade?" In the process, they revealed and debunked three myths about sex trade workers:
The research Alderson and Twiss did at WISH lead to a new understanding of how to work with women living “in conditions of extreme poverty and violence” (p. 25) — women for whom low self-esteem and the need to meet basic needs often hinders their ability to participate in learning activities. The women who participated in the research showed how important it is to create safe learning spaces that are non-threatening, non-judgemental and address women’s needs in realistic ways.
In the present research, we build on Literacy for Women on the Street by exploring the literature and practice of Harm Reduction to find out how it can influence and improve our work.