Plan Worldwide Annual Review and Combined Financial ...

Work during 2012 towards our strategy
1 Tackling exclusion
Reaching marginalised children
and communities
We aim to focus our work on children and
families who have been excluded from
development because of poverty, ethnicity,
gender, disability or other factors. Reaching
excluded groups and individuals within
communities requires dedication, persistence,
time, money and cultural sensitivity. Plan has many
programmes targeted at excluded groups, however,
ensuring all our programmes and processes engage
with the most vulnerable and excluded people is
very challenging and complex.
With the help of expert external consultants
we have reviewed our current practice and
developed a comprehensive approach to
tackling exclusion, and a plan for addressing
the implications of this commitment for Plan.
This will be a long-term process, requiring
sustained management commitment.
Many of our programme countries are exploring
issues around exclusion in their local context.
They are looking critically at which children and
youth are reached by our work – and which are
left out – and are developing new ways to tackle
both the causes and consequences of exclusion.
Promoting gender equality
One of our priorities in tackling exclusion is
promoting gender equality. In 2012, we rolled out
our gender policy globally. We are also developing
a gender audit tool for our programme work.
See the section on Assessing and increasing our
effectiveness on page 10 to read about more
about the work we have done in this key area.
2 Improving programme quality
This commitment does not only involve
keeping track of the impact that our
programmes have on individuals and
communities. It also means making sure
that each element of programming –
including identifying communities, designing
and agreeing programmes with communities,
providing training and assessing and reporting
on outcomes – is of the highest possible quality.
Our performance agenda
We have been working to define further our
child-centred community development approach
to ensure field staff consistently provide high
quality assistance to the people they work with.
To read more, see the section on Assessing and
increasing our effectiveness on page 10.
Developing an academy for continuous
staff learning
This centre of excellence will make sure Plan’s
staff reflect and learn on our core principles
of child-centred community development.
The academy will improve our staff’s
knowledge, skills and practices in community
development and emergencies. We have
recruited a team to manage this project.
Our academy should be operational by
the end of 2013.
Boosting technical knowledge in
thematic areas
Plan is putting in place global teams of technical
advisors, who will work to improve the quality
and effectiveness of our programmes within
thematic areas such as gender, child protection
and education.
3 Expanding successful programmes
Replicating effective projects to reach
more children and young people
We want to ensure that our programmes achieve
maximum impact. This may mean identifying
interventions that can be implemented on a larger
scale to reach more children. It may also mean
improving programmes to reach the most difficult
to reach; or working with others to adopt and
replicate good practice.
We are working to develop a broader
understanding of the concept of scaling up
because looking from a rights-based perspective,
bigger is not always better. A review conducted
in 2012 (see Reviewing our work to scale up
programmes on page 11) proposed a new
definition and encouraged us to always ask the
critical question: “What is the best way to scale
up this programme?”
We have also established a research and a
knowledge management group to improve the
quality of research and ensure that Plan teams
share and learn effectively from our experiences.
Plan in five years’ time
4 Extending our influence
Strengthening our global advocacy on
behalf of children and young people
Plan seeks to become a leader of global
thinking and advocacy, particularly in the
areas of education and child protection.
Significant work took place during 2012
to build our internal capacity and skills so
we can launch our global Because I am a Girl
campaign in October 2012. Our overarching
campaign goal, to ensure girls transition to
post primary education, is led by advocacy
goals, supported with programme efforts
and communications messaging.
We have opened offices in New York and
Addis Ababa, adding to our current teams
in Brussels and Geneva, to enable closer links
with the UN and the NGO community.
Plan will be an organisation known for quality, rights-based programmes for children,
especially those who are most marginalised – our programmes will make significant
impacts on the lives of children and their families. Above all, we will be an organisation
that listens to its stakeholders and supports them to have a voice and be heard.
Plan will also be recognised for its sound, collaborative processes, including a strong,
modern, shared monitoring and evaluation system.
For further information and updates on our strategic progress, please visit
plan-international.org/strategy
OUR STRATEGY
9