About Sex Work Awareness

Sex Work Awareness is the organization that benefits from calendar sales.

Mission Statement
We believe that all sex workers have a right to self-determination; to choose how we make a living and what we do with our bodies.

We aim to empower our diverse community by building the capacity of sex worker-serving and sex worker member-based institutions as well as the skills and resources of sex workers themselves.

We also conduct research about sex workers and the sex industry in order to better understand it, develop public education initiatives, and advocate for the rights of sex workers.

History

Since its official debut in March 2008, SWA has launched a handful of projects that fulfill its mission. The first project, which launched at the end of March 2008, was inspired by the expressed need for basic information about the sex industry in conversations at the Women, Action, and the Media  feminist conference held annually in Boston and organized by the Center for New Words. The result of these conversations is the website Sex Work 101, which serves as a resource for basic information about sex work and people who work in the sex industry. The site is accessible and is designed as a public education tool for curious people as well as members of the press.  SWA also successfully funded, created, and implemented a media training workshop for sex workers called Speak Up with the support of the women behind the 2009 Sex Blogger Calendar.