The BSWC South Africa
Meet The Team
Nosipho Vidima - South Africa Coordinator
Nosipho is a sex worker, a sex workers rights specialist, a feminist, and a researcher. Nosipho has worked in the sex work rights and advocacy for the decriminalisation of sex work for the past 8 years, with South African and within the SADAC region, however her work is of global reach and nature. Most of her career was with SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy
Taskforce), where in the 7 years there she was instrumental in the development of the Human Rights Défense Programme, under Hands-off of AIDSFONDS. She coordinated and monitored sex workers deaths on the #SayHerName campaign, she was lead researcher in the #SayHerName Report 2018 -20191 , which was funded by Oxfam, of which she was the direct liaison for funding reports and communication. Her work includes consultancy work done.
with MSF Malawi on developing sex work Programmes, building advocacy strategies for sex work.
groups in Malawi and Zimbabwe.
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She has worked as a research assistant on research. around sex work and migration, sex work and trafficking, with Lead Researcher Ntokozo Yingwana, publication of these are included in the Global
Alliance Against Traffic in Women report of 2018.
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Nosipho has been part of the formation for a Southern African Sex Workers Alliance
(Working group) alongside, Sisonke, Pow Wow, Love Alliance and AidsFonds. We sit in the working group that meets once or twice a month for decision making, from the writing of a Terms of Reference for a consultant that will assist with clarification of roles for the working group, setting up a clear mandate as given below,
Creating a timeline for the working group on its tasks, a clear duties for a future coordinator, a clear terms of engagement with sexworker led organisations across SADAC, and SASWA’s terms of engagement with ASWA and NSWP, our first-year advocacy strategy and overall making SASWA into a recognized alliance by 2022.
Nosipho is vice -chair in the Regional Grants Review Committee for Love Alliance, a network that has a commitment to protecting, promoting and fulfilling sexual and reproductive health.
and rights (SRHR) globally, unifying people who use drugs, sex workers and LGBTIQ+ movements, and amplifying the diversity of voices in these communities. The Regional Grant Committees (RGCs) consist of up to nine selected LGBTQI+, sex workers and people who use drugs community experts and activists selected by the alliance partners based on their experience in advocacy and capacity to contribute to the overall and country Theory of Change. Alliance partners are observers in the grant-making process and are responsible for the management of implementation on a national, sub-regional and global level.
About Us
Preamble
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We are the Black Feminist Sex Workers Collective. We are an intersectional, feminist, queer collective that is sex worker-led and invested in supporting a movement that centers and is led by Black women, trans and gender-diverse sex workers from across sex work industries. Our mission is to offer holistic context-specific support to sex workers, grounded in feminist praxis of care, as we collectively champion efforts towards achieving the full decriminalisation of sex work. We intend to do so by connecting sex workers; offering collaborative capacity-building support and facilitation; supporting opportunities for skills and knowledge exchanges; offering feminist political education and resource sharing and working together as we mold each other to become self-determinant and reliant advocates for the decriminalisation of sex work supported by evidence-based research-led and conducted by sex workers.
Vision
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Our vision is to amplify the voices of sex workers, from across the sex work industries, at a grassroots level as they advocate for the full decriminalisation of sex work foregrounding their voices and lived experiences. We envision supporting the strengthening of active self-organised networks and communities of sex workers through sustainable strategies and solutions as they advocate for the realisation of labour protection rights, human rights, social justice, and the full decriminalisation of sex work. We envision a world where sex workers are free to enjoy pleasure as a feminist choice, sexual and bodily autonomy, and agency, a world were sex work can be both a sexual pleasure and work, without the need to separate the two. We envision a world where sex workers participate in the economic mainstream. We envision a world where sex workers are protected from gender-based violence, all forms of torture and other human rights violations.
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Mission
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Our mission is to unify, amplify the voices of sex workers and support sex workers with strategic and holistic reinforcements to drive advocacy for the full decriminalisation of sex work. Our support will include:
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a. Providing intersectional feminist political education.
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b. Supporting collaborative capacity-building initiatives and facilitations.
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c. Supporting the creation and amplification of accessible information and spaces for sharing resources and their experiences.
d. Supporting sex workers establish and strengthen existing networks for peer-to-peer centered support.
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e. Support with strategic and creative activism strategies.
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f. Supporting with mapping sex workers and archiving their experiences.
View this workbook for sex workers feminist advocacy, put together by Nosipho Vidima.