Overview of activities in 2005
The Frontiers Prevention Project (FPP) continued to intensify and scale up activities in-country in 2005. Significantly, the project made in-roads to extend access of prevention services to the most hard-to-reach groups, i.e. women in the informal sex industry, seasonal sex workers, transgender communities, men who have sex with men (MSM) who do not self-identify and injecting drug users.
In 2005, the number of female sex workers and MSM consistently reached through prevention activities (including peer outreach and increased availability of STI treatment services and condoms) in Ecuador, Cambodia and Andhra Pradesh (India) totalled 219,604. Interventions such as the provision of safe spaces, discussion groups for mutual support, cultural and solidarity building and building skills to negotiate safe sex and reduce risk were also carried out.
In Ecuador, project activities were led and taken forward by sex worker associations and MSM community-based organisations that FPP had supported in organising in the previous two years. Additionally, activities in FPP sites were scaled up through 20 new grants to key population community-based organisations.
In Cambodia, participatory site assessments with drug users were carried out in all 3 FPP sites. These assessments were initial interventions to help establish contact with drug users in the sites and to organise support networks in order to scale up outreach activities and deliver other prevention services.
In Andhra Pradesh, scaling up of activities included expanded coverage at district levels and improving STI related clinical services for key populations. In 2005, in Andhra Pradesh over 37,000 consultations were provided through ‘Mythri Clinics’ established by the project.
In Madagascar, innovative work on anti-violence and anti-stigma through a three component intervention package came to fruition in 2005. This involved mobilising sex work associations, analysing site assessment findings around violence and stigma within the context of the country’s legal framework, and carrying out province-level advocacy activities to increase stakeholder commitment to work against violence and stigma.
During 2005, the first phase of qualitative evaluation studies focusing on social capital and other related issues in India, Ecuador and Cambodia, were completed and final reports from all three countries have been produced. Additionally, findings from the biomarker surveys carried out in India during the baseline study are now available.
Finally, 2005 saw not only an acceleration in the number of people contacted and the numbers of services provided, but additionally a great degree of strengthening of institutional linkages between the implementing groups and an increase in the profile and intensity of policy activities and dissemination of programme learning, both nationally and internationally.
