Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with Sex Workers Implementing Comprehensive HIV/STI Programmes with | Page 74

3 Community-led Services As the programme matures, a more structured process for selecting new community outreach workers may be adopted: 1. An informal committee of community leaders and programme staff, including current community outreach workers, defines the criteria for new community outreach workers, identifies potential community outreach workers, contacts them to see if they are willing to serve and conducts a basic interview with them. The candidates are ranked based on the criteria listed in Box 3.3. 2. The candidates are asked to take part in a social network mapping exercise, facilitated by outreach co-ordinators, to determine the size of their social networks of sex workers (see Figure 3.5). 3. Current community outreach workers talk to some of the potential community outreach worker’s contacts to see whether the candidate would be acceptable to them as a community outreach worker. 4. Based on the interviews, social network mapping and consultations, the committee selects the appropriate number of new community outreach workers. 5. The committee discusses methods for community monitoring of the community outreach worker’s performance. (This could be through a formal community committee: see Section 3.4.3.) Community members should able to contact the project if they have any issues related to the community outreach worker. Figure 3.5 Social network map A social network map represents how sex workers at a particular location are linked by relationships of acquaintance or friendship. The map is created by a sex worker to show his or her degrees of connection to other sex workers. Each circle represents an individual sex worker, and the arrows point to other sex workers whom that individual knows. Effective community outreach workers have large networks. The map may be used to assign a community outreach worker to a group of sex workers for outreach, and to ensure that each community outreach worker is contacting the sex workers they know best. Source: India HIV/AIDS Alliance, Andhra Pradesh, India 52