J. Busza et Bt. Schunter, From competition to community: participatory learning and action among young, debt-bonded Vietnamese sex workers in Cambodia, REPROD H M, 9(17), 2001, pp. 72-81
Community mobilisation strategies for HIV/AIDS prevention based on recognit
ion of social vulnerability and concepts of empowerment have emerged at the
forefront of international efforts to reduce the AIDS pandemic, increasing
ly replacing a focus on individual risk. This paper describes the start-up
phase Of a participatory learning and action project to create a sense of c
ommunity identity as a first step towards collective action among some 300
young, debt-bonded, brothel-based migrant sex workers from Vietnam in Phnom
Penh, Cambodia. The factors that make sex workers vulnerable to HIV also p
ose considerable barriers to mobilising them, due to competing interests be
tween and among brothel owners and sex workers. Discussion and visual tools
- e.g. a spider diagram of causes of unsafe sex and how to overcome these
- are being used in group work to analyse concerns expressed by sex workers
, along with survey questionnaires and in-depth interviews. In the second p
hase the project will address sensitive topics such as violence and unsafe
sex in more depth, in hopes of protecting the emerging solidarity among sex
workers and shifting the balance towards greeter co-operation.