PEERS was established in 1995 with a small group of dedicated volunteers, most of whom were survivors of sex trade work, with many having recently exited the work. The group of a dozen incorporated and received some funding for participating in research projects during 1996. PEERS was granted $200,000 in 1997 from the provincial government to develop an agency that would provide employment training for survivors of prostitution, as well as programs and services for sex workers. Five of the core group were hired to create and develop PEERS. Over the years, the core operating grant of $200,000 has been maintained, but not without much effort, and additional program dollars have been received for several time-limited projects. In response to information gleaned from both formal research projects and from anecdotal evidence provided by sex trade workers, PEERS has identified four critical program principles. The principles are called choice, capacity-building, harm reduction, and trust. Regarding choice, PEERS supports both women seeking to exit the work and women who choose to continue to work in the sex trade. The intention of emphasizing choice is to enhance women's power in the trade and to increase their options beyond it. Capacity-building focuses on enhancing the strategies of resistance that women have used to maintain their dignity and sense of self-worth, as well as the survival strategies they have used to keep themselves, and often their children, alive. PEERS understands the differences between sex trade work and other work and accepts that those who have recently exited from the trade need time to revise their survival responses. In the area of harm reduction PEERS not only distributes clean needles and condoms, but also is involved in guiding workers and ex-workers to various types of treatment and training programs and services. In building trust among those it would serve, PEERS continues to emphasize its origins as a peer-led organization and its reliance on input from sex trade workers to inform its program development. Isolation, denial and coping skills, trauma from violence, and self-medication with drugs and alcohol often dominate the world of the sex trade worker, and this requires that organizations who serve them effectively be holistic and nonjudgmental as they offer services relevant to the needs perceived by those whom they would help. 24 references