NUM’s 12 Days of Christmas
13 December 2021
As we approach the run-up to Christmas and the holiday season, NUM are taking a look back at our past year and sharing all of the work your donations have allowed us to do.
Your support is vital in our work to end all forms of violence against sex workers. It contributes to every part of NUM’s work, and every part of NUM’s work is work to keep sex workers safe and help them to achieve justice through and beyond law and policy.
In our 12 Days of Christmas, we’ll share some of work with you each day!
We are incredibly thankful for every sex worker who trusts NUM when they experience harm so that we can prevent harm to others.
If you’re a UK sex worker and not yet a member of NUM, you can register here! It’s completely free!
See more of our mental health resources, including our therapist directory, here!
The NUM checker tools have been used almost 40 times a day since the launch of our new platform in mid-June 2021. Sex workers who received a positive match using our checker tools said that this allowed them to avoid potentially dangerous individuals and make informed decisions about their work.
We are very excited about being able to provide support to sex workers in-person in Scotland, and directly offering our mental health and casework support, as well as other resources.
On top of this, we’ve worked with SWARM, ECP, SWAI and Umbrella Lane to produce evidence for the Home Office Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, and published Why Report, a study looking at sex workers’ motivations on who they choose to report harms against them to.
It’s absolutely vital that sex workers are involved in or lead the research process at every step. Sex workers are the experts in their own lives, and are the most able to speak on them. Our services are shaped by them, as law and policy should also be.
We now want to continue providing this emergency provision for sex workers to prevent survival sex and support those who experience trauma, by reducing their financial burdens, allowing them time to recover.
We also have our Tips and Tits Webinars from our R&D Team, which provide information on NUM services and other resources to help sex workers stay safe and access the support they need!
You can provide feedback you have here at any time!
Our amazing CEO, Dr. Raven Bowen’s book – Work, Money and Duality – discusses the issues faced by people who balance working within the sex industry with more traditional jobs.
It considers labour rights, stigma and austerity – pertinent issues for all sex workers.
Kate Lister generously donated proceeds from her book Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts to NUM along with Simon Trewin and Thames & Hudson. This book shares the colourful history of sex for sale.
NUM Caseworker Carolyn Henham is part of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine research team that recently published a study that examines the legal and social determinants of violence, anxiety/depression among sex workers in East London, providing vital evidence on the dangers of stigma.
NUM Research and Development member Tess Herrmann has published a paper on the impact of Covid-19 on adult services websites alongside Lilith Brouwers. The paper demonstrates the power that websites have to help keep sex workers safe – and the dangers of what can happen when those responsibilities are not met.
We’ve just launched our Racial Justice for Sex Workers #RJ4SW project that will examine barriers sex workers of colour face when accessing public services and developing the pathways and policy change.
Ensuring sex workers are heard is central to the work we do. This is not just within NUM, but at all levels of policy-making, research and advocacy. It is vital that we continue championing sex workers’ voices and fairly compensating sex workers for their time, energy and labour.
Help us continue our vital work – our safety tools, our reporting and alerting system, our mental health support, our research and advocacy, and so, so much more!