Contact Admin. The Sonagachi model is now a broadly diffused evidence-based empowerment program. The intervention which was conducted in β significantly: The Sonagachi Project was also a model for and its leadership advisors to the recent Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded scale-up of HIV prevention targeting high-risk groups in India i. Education and leadership development, Media use and advocacy, Public education and participation, Organizing associations and unions, Work training and micro-enterprise, Enabling services and assistance, and Rights protection and promotion see Jana et al.
However, program impacts have only been reported quantitatively for increased condom use Basu et al. Broadening focus from condom use and STD infection to common factors of effective prevention programs enables elaboration of the ecologically driven empowerment processes, impacts, and limitations, and contributes to the practice-based evidence needed to support researchers and prevention planners to better understand ecologically oriented, multi-component, empowerment programs Green, Empowerment has been elaborated at psychological, organizational, and community levels, and links individual self-efficacy i.
The challenges to operationalizing and measuring empowerment have also inhibited generating a strong evidence-base for empowerment program impacts, particularly quantitative results prioritized by many researchers, policy makers, and funders. Empowerment theory and practice focused on enhancing the status and agency of women is commonly addressed in development economics Kabeer, ; Sen, Low education and lack of economic opportunities drive some women in India to sex work when abandoned by husbands, widowed, orphaned, or facing abject poverty Gangopadhyay et al.
Countervailing these trends are observations that economic opportunities for women outside the home increase negotiating power in household decision-making Sen, Micro-finance addresses economic exclusion and vulnerability by making credit available to poor women and families Yunus, The Sonagachi Project is organized into relatively distinct organizational units that emerged over time in response to community needs and that work closely together to deliver a variety of clinical services and empowerment strategies.
Their evolution and theory of action are described below and shown in Fig. Sex workers were hired and trained as peer educators, condom social marketers, and eventually as supervisors and program coordinators. In each community served, a local DMSC chapter is established with local sex workers elected by community members for two-year terms as President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer.
