A Night On The Streets With HIPS:
Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive

by: Kristin Fisher

WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) — It’s 11 p.m. on a Friday night and three volunteers are standing in an Adams Morgan storage room filled with 10,000 condoms.

“So we’ve got the hotline phone, the GPS, all the condoms?” asks HIPS volunteer, Julie Ost.

“We’ve got Magnums, Tuxedos, Trojans, and we’ve got lube,” says Mike Hardin, another HIPS volunteer.

It’s not your average checklist, but for these volunteers, it’s just another night at HIPS.

“HIPS stands for Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, and we do holistic health education, empowerment and crisis services for people who are involved in both the formal sex industry and also people who do more informal sex trading,” said HIPS’ executive director, Cyndee Clay. Read More…