Prostitute Retraining Program, From Johns to Geriatrics
A new project in Germany that could be well applied in Costa Rica, has been teaching prostitutes a wholly new bedside manner - retraining them to become care workers for the elderly.

Many experts consider women with experience in the sex trade to be especially well suited to the job.

The number of prostitutes in Costa Rica, like in Germany has grown in recent years.

The story in the German SPIEGEL ONLINE, tells of  how  Angie, the prostitute, became Angelika the care worker for the elderly last year.

"Angie" described herself to potential customers as "the buxom blonde from Bochum - without taboos and available around the clock."

Now, as Angelika, she is Employed by a mobile social care service. The one-time blonde now has short brown hair and has traded her stilettos for sensible shoes. Instead of taking care of their sexual needs, she now helps her customers bathe and change their bandages. "It's easy for me," says Angelika, who just finished her training.

What the woman from Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley managed to do on her own is now being considered by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as a model for other sex trade workers: off the street and into the old folks home. The novel retraining scheme is being financed with over €1 million in state and EU money.

"It was a logical move," says Rita Kühn from Diakone Westfalen, which runs nursing homes across the country and is organizing the project. According to Kühn, prostitutes have "good people skills," aren't easily disgusted and have "zero fear of contact."

Those are all characteristics that can set them apart from trainee nurses and future care workers, believes Kühn. She is so confident that prostitutes are cut out for nursing care jobs that she wants to offer 30 women the chance to have a new career with two years of courses and vocational training.

For the 56-year-old Gisela Zohren the unusual program came at just the right time. The former star dominatrix, who works for the prostitute help center "Midnight Mission," is in charge of the project in Dortmund. Founded in 1918, the center has rarely had so much to do. In recent years, she's heard increasing bad news from the red light milieu.

Competition has surged at bordellos and among streetwalkers as thousands of women have poured into the sex trade -- and not just from economically depressed Eastern Europe. There are plenty of mothers simply trying to make ends meet, academics who can't find other work, or even schoolgirls trying to make some extra pocket money.

In an attempt to alleviate any concerns of potential employers, Zohren and the project coordinators from the cities of Bochum and Münster go on a road show . "The people we talk with need to realize that prostitution can offer true qualifications," says Zohren.

Rita Kühn from Diakone Westfalen is hoping for absolute discretion from nursing managers to avoid elderly men demanding erotic services from their new nurses.

Ex-prostitute Angelika is glad that her new colleagues and customers don't know about her past in the red light milieu. She feels "very comfortable" in her new job -- even though she doesn't earn even half as much as she did as Angie the hooker. And due to cutbacks in healthcare, she doesn't have as much time for her customers as she once did. "I used to be able to listen for a good half hour," she says. "But that isn't really possible now."