Our members use an intersectional justice, harm reduction, and human rights based approach to anti-trafficking work and sex work labor rights.

The Ishtar Collective was created in January 2020 due to lack of an organization dedicated to sex workers or survivors that was led by people with lived experience in Vermont.

We began in simple policy- and self- advocacy, but soon had to pivot and address the needs of our disabled queer and trans sex worker members, who were suffering from a food and housing crisis under the pandemic…

…and so added direct services in the form of food, housing, and healthcare to our policy advocacy and education work; because people couldn’t get food in rural Vermont, were getting kicked out of their homes because they could not work, and were explicitly being declined government-distributed pandemic-relief funds as sex workers.