Aboriginal Health and Safety Project (AHSP)

Works with Indigenous women with current or past involvement in the sex trade. Offers cultural learning, community connections, self-esteem building, and peer outreach. Indigenous Evenings or Mornings in the Drop-in are offered once a week and include activities such as drumming, beading, and dream-catcher making; open to non-Indigenous women. Provides Individualized Support to Indigenous women who have experienced trauma related to colonization, residential school experience, foster care system, and systemic discrimination, in addition to the violence they face on the streets. Support includes navigating the court system, form completion assistance for identification, and housing. Also assists women to reunite with family in their home communities, and works with the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) Sex Trade Liaison to help women fleeing intimate partner violence. Aboriginal Culture and Creativity Program is a daytime program for eight to 10 women who meet twice a week for six-month cycles to engage in hands-on traditional art activities, learn cultural practices, and participate in health and wellness themed workshops. Participants assemble and distribute goody bags to women on the street through street outreach on a monthly basis. Office hours vary. Funded by Vancouver Coastal Health, and by provincial and federal governments.