EXIT Handbooks: Supporting Persons in Prostitution

Two handbooks on best practices

CAP International published two handbooks within the scope of its EXIT programme. 

These handbooks gather the best practices of grassroots and survivor-led organisations providing direct assistance to persons in prostitution around the world. Based on the experience of CAP International’s member-organisations, they highlight the diversity of actions taken by abolitionist NGOs supporting persons in prostitution and their specific and ambitious approach aiming at a sustainable exit from this system of violence: the grassroots abolitionist approach. 

These tools are guides to good practice for professionals wishing to develop their activity with and for persons in prostitution and aims to raise awareness of the lesser-known grassroots abolitionist approach.

Handbook 1: What is the grassroots abolitionist approach? 

This approach, implemented by the members of CAP International, is inspired by the lived experiences and life paths of survivors of prostitution who successfully exited prostitution.  

It centres prostitution as a form of violence and seeks to provide comprehensive support for persons in prostitution in addressing the various needs they express, while aiming for a sustainable exit from this system of violence. 

By tackling the patterns of oppression and factors of vulnerability that fuel the prostitution system, it offers concrete alternatives for individual and collective emancipation both for persons in prostitution and the communities most impacted by the prostitution system. 

This handbook highlights the various support initiatives carried out on the ground by abolitionist organisations in order to meet the primary needs of persons in prostitution (access to food, health, housing, justice) and to strengthen their access to real socioeconomic autonomy (through support for formal and non-formal education, vocational training, income-generating activities or job placement programmes).

Handbook 2: Providing individualised support to persons in prostitution 

This second handbook gives a platform to survivors and frontline workers and features the specificities of the grassroots abolitionist approach in terms of building an authentic relationship with persons in prostitution, to provide them with individualised support.  

Grassroots abolitionist organisations use various approaches to build up individualised support to persons in prostitution: this ranges from meeting people in prostitution where they are, to assessing their needs, creating an equal relationship based on trust and providing comprehensive access to trauma sensitive support.  

This guide does not seek to a define a single, chronological, rigid approach, but rather to highlight the actions grassroots NGOs have in common, what best practices have been observed, in order to help other organisations in their understanding of the realities of prostitution, and their effort to facilitate access to exit pathways out the system.

The EXIT programme 

CAP International’s EXIT programme is implemented by a consortium of 4 member-organisations: People Serving Girls at Risks in Malawi, Talita Asia in Mongolia, South Kolkata Hamari Muskan in India and Maiti in Nepal.

Its aim is to offer alternatives and exit pathways out of prostitution for women and girls in these countries, and to strengthen the exchange of good practice between the members of the consortium. These guides are the two first handbooks from a series of three on the EXIT programme. 

The 1st handbook is available in English – French – Spanish – German – Portuguese 

The 2nd handbook is available in English – French – Spanish – German

• International
• EXIT
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