MuJER’s Empowerment Community Center Opens, 2009

In just over four years, MuJER has gone from offering literacy classes in the women’s work rooms at the La Línea red light district to opening a full-service community center, known as the Empowerment Center , to serve female sex workers throughout Guatemala City . We now serve over 350 women and have begun to operate outside the city as well.

Much of our programming—including semester-long educational and vocational courses as well as short-term self-esteem and anti-violence workshops—takes places at our Empowerment Center . The Center, located in a colonial house in downtown Guatemala City (not far by bus from several red light districts), includes a communal area, a class room, a courtyard, and a small office. Our Center provides a safe place for the women to spend time, relax, discuss their needs, and build constructive relationships with other women sex workers. It also serves as a home-base from which we can educate women about their rights and help them organize to address their collective concerns.

While working with the women of our first red light district, La Línea , we noticed that although the women were bettering their skill sets through our programs, they were hesitant to consider alternative employment opportunities because they did not believe that they deserved a better life. Since low self-esteem also means that women are unable to stand up for themselves or to speak out against the discrimination, abuse, and violence they face every day, we realized that we needed to help women sex workers develop a sense of self-worth and a belief in their right to enjoy a better life. We see this happening at our center every day.  In fact, is often as a member of “MuJER” that Guatemalan sex workers become active in promoting their rights as well as the rights of others in the sex worker community.

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