Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, says the city’s sex workers will be much more vulnerable if funding isn’t restored for the Mobile Access Project outreach program. The program is indefinitely suspended as of June 12.

Credit: Doug Shanks

NEWS: Sex-worker outreach program in jeopardy

Vancouver’s only overnight mobile outreach program for sex-trade workers will close tomorrow (June 12) due to a lack of funding. The program, known as the Mobile Access Project (MAP), began in 2004 as a partnership between the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE), and the Vancouver Agreement Women’s Strategy Task Team.

MAP is the only service of its kind in the city for what are often termed “survival” sex-trade workers; they often work in isolated areas and with little capacity to call for help or to access resources. The MAP van has operated nightly from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., with WISH staffers driving it across the city to provide assistance to sex workers while on the job. The van is equipped with condoms (86,000 are handed out annually), a needle exchange, first-aid supplies, and coffee, water, and juice. It offers a safe place for sex workers to report violent incidents, talk about their experiences, and access resources for shelter, counselling, and exiting the trade. The van needs $250,000 of annual funding from the provincial government to operate — which, as of tomorrow, will be pulled.

“The provincial government, like other jurisdictions around the world, is facing challenging and unprecedented economic times, requiring difficult decisions,” the office of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General told WE in a statement last week. “Once cabinet is sworn in, these kinds of decisions will be made as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, the women who work on the city’s streets will be left more vulnerable, says Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH Drop-In Centre Society, a Downtown Eastside drop-in centre for female survival sex workers. “The safety of the women is just totally in jeopardy because of this,” she says.

Gibson notes that MAP van staff take 95 per cent of the city’s “bad date” reports, which document violent incidents experienced by sex workers. “They are completely vulnerable to any person who wants to perpetrate violence.”

PACE is also facing funding shortfalls, mostly due to a lack of private donors. “Philanthropy’s sort of at a standstill,” says Natasia Wright, acting agency coordinator. While PACE and WISH’s funding shortfalls are due to shortages from different sources, Wright says programs for survival sex workers have, in general, continued to be marginalized, both at the government level and in the public consciousness. “I think it scares people; people would rather pretend like it doesn’t exist,” she says. “Also, after [the Pickton case], people, I think, really want to feel like [sex] workers are safe now that Pickton’s away... He was this monster that the police took care of. Of course, that’s not the case; it’s part of a larger social problem of sex workers’ human rights not being protected... The safety net isn’t working for these people, and that’s scary.”

Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang is planning to bring a motion to council that will help find ways for the City to play a part in reducing the harm brought to sex workers. For 2009, the City gave an Annual Community Services grant of $78,132 to WISH and $57,632 to PACE. “But for the MAP van itself, it’s nothing we can do outside of waiting on the province,” says Jang. “It’s tough times all around, but they’ve got to sort out their priorities, and this is clearly one that has to be at the top of the list. It gets me all choked up... Human abuse should not be tolerated.”