AmyAnne: supporting essential service providers to treat sex workers with respect and dignity

AmyAnne Smith is a former medic in the Canadian Forces reserves, spent two years teaching abroad in South Korea, and has two bachelor’s degrees in English. She also volunteers at a clinic designed to help senior citizens monitor and maintain their health, and while abroad in South Korea, she founded an after-school volleyball club for her female students.

AmyAnne is passionate about the destigmatization of sex work, is an advocate for the rights of sex workers to live, work, and access essential services without bias or hatred. She joined the DOT Impactathon in Ottawa, Canada to build her idea for a social innovation that tackles these issues. Supported by the program, she developed a business model canvas and a social impact measurement strategy for her idea.

I believe that sex workers in our communities across Canada face incredible stigmatization and discrimination. If I could solve just one single issue in my community, I would seek improve sex worker’s access to health care.

Her platform, Stay Sexy: Sex Work in Canada, provides educational resources to healthcare workers and other professionals who deliver essential services so that they can treat sex workers with the respect and dignity they deserve. AmyAnne worked closely with facilitators, mentors, and peers within the DOT Impactathon to broaden her ideas, conduct a gender analysis study of her social impact solution, and infused her concept with creative and design thinking.

I was excited to participate in the program knowing it would connect me with other people who are active in their communities. Groups of motivated and passionate people can mobilize creative solutions to problems that may seem impossible when you are tackling them alone. I also knew that the DOT Impactathon could equip me with new tools, ideas, and strategies to turn my passionate ideas into tangible realities.

AmyAnne is one of seven young women in Ottawa, Canada who were selected to attend DOT’s youth innovation summit in Nairobi, Kenya.