Kayakalpa
Kayakalpa , the first NGO in Pune district to focus on HIV/AIDS.
Kayakalpa office is located in Budhwar Peth , heart of Pune City
red-light area.
Kayakalpa was instrumental in organizing HIV/AIDS awareness programs and campaigns organized in the red-light area and slums of Pune. Over 100,000 people benefited from these HIV awareness campaigns.
Kayakalpa rehab clinics provides sex education, targeted intervention, counselling, distribute condoms to both Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs) and their Male clients.
Kayakalpa provides alternative employment and rehabilitation opportunities to those Commercial Sex Workers eager to leave the profession and transform their lives.
Background of Kayakalpa
Organisation is registered under Trust Act in Pune. Kayakalpa’s response to this global pandemic has the goal of ensuring through all initiatives to prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS and to mitigate its social and economic impact. This initiative is a natural extension of Kayakalpa mission to work with the female sex workers in Pune, seek justice and transform their lives. The three strategies of this initiative are prevention, Care, and Advocacy. Spread of disease is been controlled through awareness programme on HIV and AIDS and Kayakalpa STI clinic in the red light area of Pune.
- Projects undertaken by Kayakalpa
Curently Kayakalpa has two Targeted Intervention projects which focuses primarily on prevention of HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) with high risk groups namely female sex workers (FSWs) in the red light area of Pune. These two projects are funded by Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS) through National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). It aims to halt and reverse the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among the Female Sex Workers (FSWs) and to provide quality services for their sexual health needs.
a) Integrated Counseling and Testing Centre (ICTC)
Kayakalpa has a registered ICTC centre to provide free counseling and HIV testing to the Female sex workers in the red-light area of Pune
b) Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) CENTRE
Kayakalpa also has a RNTCP centre to provide various free of cost, quality tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment services to the sex workers in the red light area through the government health system.
2. Programs carried out by Kayakalpa
Over the past 25 years kayakalpa has conducted several successful programs , Below are the few milestone programs which were successfully spread across red-light area , Pune.
a) HIV Awareness campaigns
HIV is still a very sensitive issue in India. People are stigmatised and discriminated because of HIV/AIDS. Since the inception of Kayakalpa we were able to do HIV awareness campaigns in many schools, colleges, educational institutions-both government and private.
Young boys and girls still remain ignorant about HIV/AIDS and there is no proper mechanism in the government policies to sensitise people about HIV/AIDS especially in the educational institutions. There is a pressing need to impart sex education in schools and colleges in order to sensitise people about HIV/AIDS. We were also successful in doing HIV awareness campaigns educate the people in the slums in Pune where there is growing need.
b) Street Plays
Street Play is a powerful tool to generate awareness about something. We have been doing street plays on a regular basis in order to generate awareness about HIV/AIDS in the society. Not only that we have also highlighted the issue of trafficking through street plays to challenge conventional thinking and to help people to move beyond their boundaries.
c) Advocacy Programs
Advocacy programs with the Police, lawyers, advocates, local politicians, bureaucrats are vital in tackling different sensitive issues in the Red Light Area. There is a need to educate and sensitise the above mentioned groups. We have been doing advocacy programs with the above mentioned groups to educate them so that could bring a more humane approach to the legal side.
d) Empowerment of FSWs
As we were working for the FSWs we realized that there is a pressing need to mobilise this community, make them aware of their rights which are often violated. We are actively working in this area and we have faced many problems in this field too. Mobilising and empowering the FSWs has indeed been an arduous task and there is still a lot to do in this area. We also hold campaigns and seminars to train the FSWs about their fundamental rights and so far we have received a positive response from the community.
e) Social Schemes
Today things like Pan Card, Voter Card, Bank Account, LIC Policy, etc have become vita for ones identity and livelihood. Entitling the FSWs with these schemes is also a powerful tool to empower them. With the help of the government officials we have been able to issue identity cards to hundreds of FSWs.
f) Vocational Training to the FSWs
Most of the FSWs are absolutely illiterate and when they think of quitting their profession they don’t have skills and resources to live their lives. Keeping this in mind we started giving them different vocational trainings like Beauty Parlour, Tailoring, computer classes, etc so that they can acquire skills and live their lives like any other people in the society.
g) Education to the FSWs
When we were working with the FSWs we realized that there were many women who were interested and expressed their desire in getting formal education. There were few women who had the opportunity to complete their secondary education in their childhood and were interested in enrolling themselves in the colleges and universities. We have identified and helped such girls in the Red Light area to go for higher education.