2.5 million women in Africa aged 15-49 are sex workers.
A 2018 study identified close to 170,000 female sex workers in Kenya, with Nairobi County leading with estimates between 30,000 and 40,000.
Poverty, high levels of unemployment, limited access to education, childhood trauma, lack of skills to enter and compete in the formal job market, and pressures to provide for families make sex work the only viable economic option.
OUR MISSION
Rejesha Project Nairobi is a community-rooted nonprofit expanding access, dignity, and economic opportunity for women in commercial sex work.
We are a bridge between survival and stability, trauma and healing, unemployment and formal opportunity, stigma and a healthy community.
We envision a world where every woman has the freedom and equal access to meaningful and dignified work, unbound by circumstance or lack of opportunity.
OUR WORK
This is a biweekly outreach program where we share a meal as a way to build relationships, listen, and learn about emerging issues in our community. The Open Door Cafe is run by volunteers who prepare the food, drinks, and conduct outreach. It is often how we meet both existing and new women working in downtown Nairobi.
Open Door Cafe
Access to safe, professional, and respectful mental health support for women in sex work does not exist. From our own self-reported data, 86% of the women report mental health issues stemming from adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, rejection wounds, stigma and discrimination
Group Trauma-Informed Therapy
We provide life skills awareness and training, including financial literacy, parenting skills, human trafficking awareness, effects of substance abuse, and female reproductive health. Financial literacy training is integral because, from our own research, 88% of the women in sex work lack knowledge and skills on basic financial management.
Life Skills Empowerment
OUR IMPACT
90%
of women that Rejesha Project has met are single mothers.
30
that's how many times more female sex workers are likely to contract HIV than the general female population.
UP TO 75%
of adult female sex workers are assaulted or abused at least once in their lifetime.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”