– miners, loggers, sex workers targeted
Hope Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has been working in the interior locations of Region 7 helping miners and commercial sex workers, who are part of the most at risk population, to make informed decisions when it comes to their sexual choices.
The foundation, which has 16 years under its belt and is located in Bartica, has targeted hundreds of miners, loggers, commercial sexual workers and men who have sex with men, according to its Executive Director Ivor Melville.
During outreach programmes, Melville said, they provide HIV/AIDS awareness, referrals for screening of sexually transmitted diseases, voluntary testing and counselling and work with persons affected by substance abuse. Gender-based violence is also an issue that the foundation focuses on in those locations coupled with environmental issues including pure water and good sanitation.
“We recognized that we cannot just offer one particular kind of programme so it is a combined service approach where we seek to incorporate in our voluntary testing and counselling, malaria screening, blood pressure, diabetes…,” he told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
He said Hope Foundation has been working with over 400 miners and loggers and over 100 commercial sex workers within the past year. The foundation’s outreaches to miners and loggers are twice per quarter and those targeting commercial sex workers are on a monthly basis.
Melville said the programme has come across cases involving young women who would have been encouraged to go into the interior to work as domestics and even though they might be doing this work they are also drafted into sex work.
“Some of them are trapped. Some of them want to come out. Some of them, there is no way out for them and after a while [they] begin to get into it [commercial sex work] and then they don’t want to leave the industry,” Melville said.
He said within the past year he would have encountered about ten such cases and while the organisation would have tried to assist them some of the locations are very remote and not only is it very expensive, “we can’t just bring them out.
“We tried to assist one young lady but she said she had to wait to receive her payment because the person who took her in wasn’t there and so she could not have left without receiving her pay,” Melville revealed.
He said while mining companies have well established locations and their workers generally work in safe and environmentally friendly surroundings, for those who work in smaller establishment it is the opposite.
“For instance like the toilet area and things like that it is not up to standard because they don’t actually build permanent structures And the garbage situation sometimes is not healthy and of course if women have to be a part, it is not women friendly at times,” he said.
Through its work, the foundation hopes to help persons to make informed decisions when becoming involved in sexual activity, and to teach sex workers how to negotiate the use of a condom among other things.
Melville said a positive feature of the foundation’s work is that at least two sex workers have left the industry and have gone into business.
Bartica
In Bartica, where the foundation’s office is located, Melville said, services are provided for persons dealing with HIV–the infected and affected–and these include a safe space for persons to share their experiences and services for orphans and vulnerable children.
“It is a space where they share together. They [have] also formed a buddy system where they can hook up whether by telephone or come together in the same space and share issues and find coping methods and how to overcome challenges.”
He said the foundation has been working with around 60 adults consistently and around 105 children.
Food hampers are provided through the support of Digicel, which Melville said is Hope Foundation’s major sponsor on an annual basis apart from USAID, GHARP and Global Fund, specifically for orphans and vulnerable children and those living with the virus.
Melville described the organisation as a civil society foundation that is responding to health and environmental issues. Hope Foundation has been part of the major country response to HIV and in that region it is the only non-governmental organisation responding to the virus.
“We also saw that HIV is not a stand-alone issue but it is also a spinoff as a result of other issues such as poverty, lack of job opportunities and so we also begun to focus our attention on creating skills training for youths so that they can gain employment as we recognised that they were quite a number of youths who were school drop outs and we wanted to provide them with a skill,” Melville told the Sunday Stabroek.
Some of the persons who were provided with training were able to find jobs within the establishments where they were trained and these are success stories for the foundation.
In 1995, Operation Blessing, an overseas charity from Canada responded to a call from then minister of health, Gail Teixeira to develop an HIV project in Guyana. The project, named Cry of AIDS was launched in collaboration with two Canadian NGOs—Black Cap and Casey House—with funding from the Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH). This project was responsible for developing HIV manuals and training programmes around key themes such as: prevention, care and support, including hospice training and counselling. The Cry of AIDS Project which provided services to several populations later emerged as Hope Foundation in 1996 with the intent to serve all environs of Bartica and the surrounding riverain and hinterland communities of Region 7 Cuyuni/Mazaruni.
The foundation has 16 staff members. Melville said that in the past Hope Foundation had about 50 staff members but because of reduction in funding was forced to let people go.
