September 2006

It's harm reduction on wheels, traveling nightly to the sex workers who need a cup of hot coffee, condoms, clean needles or even safety from an attacker.

The Mobile Access Project (MAP) is a van that has been outfitted to reach out to female sex workers right where they work, on the streets of Vancouver. Run jointly by the Women's Information and Safe House (WISH) and Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE) the van is on the road seven days a week, between 10:30 pm to 5:30 am, stopping along sex workers' various strolls in Vancouver. As the strolls move, so does the van, so it's always handy for sex workers to access.

Asked what difference it makes for the women who visit the van, WISH Executive Director Kate Gibson has a quick response. "When 90 percent of the women that access the van get condoms, start there."

Not only do they pick up fresh condoms (and they do, by the thousands), but they can enjoy a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, grab fresh needles and drop off their used ones; the van collects about 1,200 used needles per month. Women visiting the van can connect with emergency services, read about or report on bad dates, ask for a referral to detox or escape an unsafe situation. In evaluations, about 15 per cent of the women have reported that the appearance of the van saved them from a sexual assault.

Typically, about 40-70 women visit the van each night; a May, 2006 evaluation of the MAP found the van gets about 1,500 to 1,700 visits per month. The evaluation also found that the presence of the van makes sex workers feel safer on the street; 16 percent of the women surveyed for the evaluation recalled a specific incident in which the van's presence prevented them from being physically assaulted while 10 percent could name a time when its presence saved them from a sexual assault. Fifty-seven percent of the women had reported bad dates to the van staff.

One of the goals of the MAP was to provide training and meaningful employment for women exiting the sex trade. Many of the women who staff the van, therefore, are former sex workers who understand what the women on the street are experiencing. "They build pretty good relationships with the women."

Right now, the Vancouver Agreement provides funding for the MAP, at $287,000 per year. That's slightly more than the lifetime cost of $250,000 of treating one HIV-infected person.

Gibson said WISH and PACE applied to the National Crime Prevention office for an expansion of the MAP's mandate, called the Mobile Access Project Quick Response Initiative. The two organizations wanted to run the van during the day, to provide on-the-ground, immediate responses to concerns raised by business owners, residents and sex workers. The intention was to have the van respond to such calls immediately, so that its trained staff could diffuse situations before they erupted into violence, and use conflict mediation techniques to arrive at mutually agreeable solutions.

The project did not receive funding. "I was told it wasn't the kind of innovative relationship they wanted to fund," a clearly frustrated Gibson said. She's disappointed with the refusal and hopes that she can find funding elsewhere, because she sees the desperate need for the quick-response services that the van could provide. "We have already built the relationships with sex trade workers all throughout town," she said. This project would have built on those existing relationships.