Plan Worldwide Annual Review and Combined Financial ...

Plan’s global spend in 2012
€60 million
Strengthening our
response
Big disasters reconfigure lives and landscapes and
devastate communities – children are often the
worst hit. Plan’s immediate response is to meet the
urgent needs of children (such as food and water).
Plan prioritises child protection and education to
re-establish a sense of security and normality.
Child-friendly spaces help to ensure children’s
safety and help to heal emotionally. A key focus
is to safeguard children from harm and
exploitation both during and after disasters.
In Liberia, Plan’s integrated education and child
protection programme is responding to the
growing influx of refugees from the Cote D’Ivoire
by establishing child welfare committees (made
up of Liberians and refugees of all ages and both
genders) in 18 communities. The members are
being trained to respond to and prevent child
abuse, exploitation, violence and neglect.
In the face of the growing number of emergencies,
we have strengthened our response in a number of
ways, including delivering training, recruiting more
operational and technical experts, and revising our
systems to improve performance. “The big difference
we can make in a country is largely due to our
disaster preparedness process, a capacity-building
exercise unique to Plan,” says Dr Unni Krishnan,
Plan’s Head of Disaster Preparedness and Response.
“Remarkable progress” in
disaster risk management
In 2012, Plan engaged an independent consultant
to review our progress in implementing our disaster
risk management work against our 2009 policy.
The review identified “remarkable progress” in
practically all aspects of our work in this field,
including better emergency responses, effective
alert systems and preparedness processes,
and increased fundraising.
The review also identified some areas for
improvement, such as Plan’s response to slow-onset
disasters. Slow recruitment or procurement can
lead to poor performance, and we are working to
improve in these areas. “We don’t want separate
procurement processes in emergencies – we want
good processes that can be carried out quickly,”
says Roger Yates, Director of Disaster Management.
Plan on the global stage
Sub-Saharan Africa
Broadening our reach to meet the need
Plan is developing the flexibility to address emergencies
wherever they occur, even if these are beyond our
established programme areas. For example, in 2012,
food crises and drought took us into new areas of
operation in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
In the Sahel, Plan deployed more than 31 disaster
response experts in five countries, focusing on
access to food, child protection, education, water
and sanitation, and children’s health. In Burkina Faso,
we built two boreholes, 96 latrines and 81 showers
at three refugee camps, benefiting 16,620 refugees.
We also established 16 primary school classes and
five preschool classes, and distributed school kits
benefiting 993 children in two refugee camps.
In the Horn of Africa, we set up ongoing programmes
in five drought-stricken areas new to Plan, to help
nearly 1.2 million people, including children, rebuild
their lives. We raised €23.2 million and provided food
to communities and supplementary feeding in schools
and health centres, as well as water, health
and sanitation training and facilities.
Plan has become a key player in child-centred disaster risk reduction. Plan:
• is the deputy chair of the Sphere Project to improve quality and accountability in the humanitarian sector
• is a member of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership
• sits on global working groups on Education in Emergencies and Child Protection in Emergencies
• is a member of the UN Inter-agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergencies
• Plan’s Director of Disaster Risk Management is a member of the board of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies.
DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT
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