Peer educators in Pune, India use a system of stickers and drawings to assess and track risky behavior related to HIV and STIs among their fellow sex workers.
The peer educators cannot read and write, but this pictorial system enables them to be the primary data collectors for the micro-planning system that was key to scaling up Pathfinder International’s HIV prevention program in Maharashtra, India called Mukta.
This pictorial micro-planning system “unlocked the knowledge of the sex worker community,” Mukta Director Darshana Vyas, said Wednesday at an event hosted by GHD.
The peer educators collect information on 10 topics selected by them, including condom use, alcohol consumption, clinical service use, and a regular partner with whom they were less likely to use condoms. The stickers are translated into recordable data, which then is reported up the chain of command for analysis.
Mukta is a project of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Avahan AIDS Initiative. The unique aspect of working with Avahan, Vyas said, is that within a week of turning in the data, project leaders receive feedback on sex worker behavior trends to ensure their strategy fits the target population and how they can alter their outreach and interventions to improve results.
Examples of decisions informed by the data were to intensify referrals for STI testing and treatment and place greater emphasis on the most at-risk sex workers — the young, new and migrant.
Grassroots community mobilization and working to create an enabling environment to empower to reduce gender violence and empower sex workers were other crucial aspects to the program, Vyas said.
Mukta provided sensitivity training to police officers and the media, created community support groups for sex workers and helped them get their state ration cards. While all these activities seem far from HIV prevention, Vyas, said they are integrally linked to female empowerment –a necessary link to higher condom use.
GHD is kicking off the new HIV prevention community on GHDonline.org for implementers around the world to share experiences like this one about what is and isn’t working in delivering prevention with a panel discussion today with Gates Foundation program officers so sign up or sign in.
