Ex-commercial sex workers graduated after rehabilitation and undergoing three-week training on employable skills in a bid to give them opportunities to earn decent living.
The eleven women most of whom were single mothers drawn from Mlolongo and Mtito-andei towns in Machakos County were trained on various courses.
Speaking during the graduation, World Provision Centre director, Rev. Simon Ngiki, said the initiative was a noble, unique and effective strategy of getting sex workers from streets, given that it empowered the girls with health and life skills as it offered them alternative ways of earning livelihoods.
Ngiki said the programme was intended to minimise incidences of HIV infections along the highway corridors, where he noted lots of prostitution goes on due to high rates of money circulation instigated by long distance truck drivers.
"After working with organised sex workers’ groups along the highway for over a decade, I realised it was providing favourable environment for more girls to get into the trade for easy money provided by free flow of customers in the name of drivers and transport corridor users," said Ngiki.
He noted that majority of the sex workers engaged into the vice not by choice but due to illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and lack of employable skills which would translate to alternative livelihoods, given that they did not have alternative ways of fending for themselves and their families.
Nziki, who was accompanied by Dr. Nyagah Lilly, former MOH Athi River District and Technical Advisor at World of Provision Centre, called on the government to support the initiative by providing employment opportunities to the graduates early next year to avoid them getting back to the streets.