Addy enters a bar. It is much like the bar where she herself used to work, where male customers would come in for a beer, for female conversation, and typically, for sex. She greets the young bar girls, who know why she is there. One of the young women, Noy, is already dressed and made up for the evening work. She listens intently and asks Addy, "I've got a question, older sister. What if . . . what if the guy already has HIV and nobody knows it . . .?"

Background: Addy and Noy are in a bar in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, a landlocked nation in Southeast Asia, and one of the poorest countries in the world. Among the last of the former Soviet satellite countries to modernize, Laos has recently expanded its economy, bringing people, goods, and ideas into the country, especially in the city of Vientiane. Also flocking to the new urban zones are young rural Laotians in search of work. As is true in many countries, the most immediate benefit ciaries of this economic growth tend to be urban men; outside of domestic work, young women without an education have relatively few opportunities in the formal job market.

The convergence of these factors – urban males with cash, newly arrived young females in need of a livelihood – is a classic recipe for a commercial sex trade, especially in a society with widening socioeconomic inequality, as is the case in Laos.

Sex work is illegal in Laos, and the industry is a controversial topic. Hence, CARE staff decided that this project would require alliances with organizations that had informal, on-the-ground access to the target population. CARE staff formed a partnership with the Vientiane Lao Youth Union, a government "mass" organization that has representation from the national to the village level. CARE assembled Working Teams for each district; these teams included government representatives from various ministries, from the Women's Union, and from the Youth Union itself. The purpose of the Working Teams was to assist CARE to identify beer shops and other establishments within their districts, to facilitate access to the owners and managers of these businesses, and to ensure official local sanction of project activities.

Having previously worked with the Laotian government, however, CARE had no local experience in partnerships with organizations like the Vientiane Lao Youth Union; for this project, all parties had to invest time, effort, and caution in developing effective new working relationships. Next, the new team at CARE, staff at the Vientiane Lao Youth Union, and the new district working teams needed to familiarize themselves with the sex work situation. The working teams mapped sex work-related establishments in the four project districts. With the district working teams taking the lead, the project was able to convince most establishment owners and managers that the project was not a threat to their business, and would provide important services to the bar girls. Dr. Ketsadasak recalled, "We had to work hard in the beginning, to come up to speed. Geraldine Zwack, our country director at the time, was very supportive of our team – she even went with us on field visits several times."

Through this process, CARE reached and recruited over 600 bar girls (and a few men) to train as peer educators. As is often the case with peer education programmes, the training itself was rather brief – only three days – and the vast majority of those who attended quickly dropped out of the project. Of the initial 600 trainees, about fifty highly motivated individuals (approximately 12 per district) eventually assumed roles as peer educators. To assist the new volunteers in their work, the Reproductive Health Initiative for Youth in Asia (RHIYA) developed a toolkit for the peer educators to use in their work. This kit included such items as sample boxes of condoms and oral contraceptives, a wooden penis model, and large pictorial cards illustrating proper condom use. CARE added additional pictorials depicting the symptoms of various STIs, etc. Finally, a referral system was established to ensure that the young sex workers could receive respectful treatment at the Vientiane Youth Centre Clinic. At last, the project was underway.

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Adapted from UNFPA Publication "GP in Education and Communication", p.21 and 23