Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme (SESP) is a survivor-founded and led empowerment and human rights organization rooted in feminist and abolitionist principles. They recognize the system prostitution, as men’s violence against women and not as work. Their vision is to create an economically, socially and legally enabling environment for women to exit the prostitution system and for the abolition thereof. Their mission is to economically empower prostituted women so that they may be able to create a life outside of the system of prostitution. They also seek to actively advocate for law reform and abolish the system of prostitution, by creating a socially and legally enabling environment for women to exit the system of prostitution should they wish to do so. In raising awareness on the harms and realities of the prostitution system and by advocating for the repealing of laws that criminalize this vulnerable group. The organisation has three programme focuses: Empowerment, Public Education and Advocacy.
•Empowerment (Economically Enabling)
They will empower women with skills. The fact is that some of these women are undocumented. Having skills like these will enable them to do informal business and will assist in their exit from prostitution. SESP also aims at securing bursaries for those who express desire to study further, employment opportunities for others and also driver’s licenses for most if not all.
•Public Education (Socially Enabling)
They seek to raise awareness among young women and girls at schools, institutions and communities on the harms of prostitution. They will also educate society on the root causes to remove stigma and judgement, and lastly they will also educate the sex buyers on the harms they cause society, by purchasing sex to reduce demand, which then lead to the abolition.
•Advocacy
They advocate for law reform that South Africa adopts and enacts the equality model sometimes known as the Swedish Law, Sex Buyer Law, or Nordic Law, a law pioneered by Sweden in 1999 and has since been implemented in Iceland and Norway (2009), Canada (2014), Northern Ireland (2015), France (2016), Ireland (2017) and Israel (2018). This law criminalizes the purchase of sex, pimping brothel keeping and other related activities with the exception of the one who is bought and sold (the women) but it also makes provision for exit support such as the project of SESP, it has been modified since it started in Sweden with the most beautiful version being that of France.
Their needs basically are anything that can assist them with the related programmes.
Contact: Mickey Meji
Survivor Empowerment & Support Programme (SESP) (179-653 NPO)
Founder & Executive Director
Mobile: +27 61 496 0451 / 0813477067
Twitter: nmihlalimeji
info@sesp.org.za
