SEX worker led charity Umbrella Lane is to use new £50,000 funding to set up a street outreach project in Glasgow.

Based in Glasgow, the charity works to support people who engage in selling or exchanging sexual services in person and/or online.

Now it has earned £50,000 from the The National Lottery Community Fund’s Lived Experience Leaders programme.

It comes as many workers are experiencing financial hardship due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Charity founder Dr Anastacia Ryan said: "We are delighted to have been successful in our recent application to the Lived Experience Leaders Fund.

"Sex worker involvement and leadership have been fundamental values of Umbrella Lane since its inception in 2015.

"As a peer led project, committed to the transformative potential of leadership amongst stigmatised and marginalised communities, we will actively train and support sex workers who wish to take a more active role in the organisation and champion our mission to promote a stigma and discrimination-free society towards sex workers."

The two other Scottish organisations to receive a share of £150,000 are Resilience Learning Partnership and Deafblind Scotland.

The Lived Experience Leaders programme was created to support organisations to better embed people who are experts due to their experiences in all aspects of operations - including making it central to Covid-19 response, recovery and renewal.

The value of lived experience leadership is becoming more widely recognised, particularly in working with and for communities who have first-hand experience of stigma and exclusion.

The National Lottery Community Fund’s Scotland chairwoman, Kate Still, said: "These groups will support and train those whom they work to become experts by experience whilst creating positive change for others."

Sex work can also overlap with issues of poverty, gender inequalities, LGBTQI+ barriers to formal employment, housing and food insecurity, domestic abuse, ans a range of other factors.

Umbrella Lane provides community, support, safe spaces and advice; recognising the choice and diverse reasons for starting sex work, moving on from sex work and gives support without judgement.

The charity says sex workers are often described “difficult to reach” when the reality is that fear of stigma, discrimination and potential criminalisation, all create dangerous barriers to access mainstream services, exacerbating risks to safety and poor health.

Coordinator of the organisation, Prerna Menon, said: "This funding will allow Umbrella Lane to go further in our mission to create positive change for all sex workers in Scotland by expanding our outreach to the most marginalised workers and by supporting other organisations to develop a meaningful and effective trauma informed approach through creation of a Sex Worker led training programme."

Umbrella Lane said the funding will be used to create sex-worker led training programmes to be delivered to third sector and mainstream services to help create a more inclusive society for sex workers.

It will also be used to start a street outreach project across Glasgow and Edinburgh to help reach marginalised workers and to bring support services directly to them.

A sex worker from the Umbrella Lane community added: “One of my favourite things about Umbrella Lane is that instead of shaming lived experience, they value and respect it.

"As a sex worker I was extremely happy to hear about The National Lottery Community Fund’s willingness to fund a sex worker-led project and it is reassuring to know they are funding an organisation out there willing to stand up for us."