Error message

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in drupal_settings_initialize() (line 802 of /backup/agenda/public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc).

Self Report 2018

The self-report on WHS Commitments below is organized according to the 24 transformations of the Agenda for Humanity. It is based on commitments pledged at the time of report submission. Click on the 'Expand' symbol to expand each section and read the reporting inputs by transformation.

Expand All

  • 1C
    Remain engaged and invest in stability

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Plan International commits to increase its capacity on and resources allocated to working in unstable, fragile and conflict affected settings.
    • Operational
    • Political Leadership to Prevent and End Conflicts

    Core Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to address root causes of conflict and work to reduce fragility by investing in the development of inclusive, peaceful societies.
    • Political Leadership to Prevent and End Conflicts
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Plan International has committed in it's new Global Strategy to unpack what is meant by it's presence and reach - and therefore what contexts and locations it will prioritise working in.

    The organisation has expanded it's response in the Middle East by now having formal registration in Jordan, and with registration underway in Lebanon. The Middle East regional team has been strengthened through additional capacity in technical areas such as Child Protection in Emergencies, as well as project management.

    In addition, Plan International is working through partners expanding it's presence in Somalia, though without a physical presence.

    The organisation has also expanded to engage in humanitarian responses outside traditional Plan International programme areas. This includes establishing a response in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh in response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. Plan International has created a conflict sensitivity "analysis package" consisting in training modules and materials to be used for our field staff.

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    In 2018 Plan International will discuss the potential expansion to include programmes in the Pacific, in particular Papua New Guinea, through the Australia National Office. Further, the Lake Chad response, which currently includes programmes in Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, will look into the feasibility of moving into Chad.

    Keywords

    Gender

  • 3D
    Empower and protect women and girls

    Individual Commitments (4)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Plan International commits to convene, lead, and coordinate, along with a global group of strategic partners, a global independent SDG progress tracker for girls and women. The initiative will highlight where data gaps currently exist and advocate for enhanced tracking and reporting, including in conflict affected and fragile states, as well as countries affected by other disasters. It will capture data from strategically chosen official SDG indicators addressing key issues for girls and women, including sexual and reproductive health. It will also track qualitative perception based indicators that highlight the progress being made across the life cycle of girls and women.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Plan International will build on its existing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in development experience to progressively build its capability to contribute to the delivery of the minimum initial package of services for reproductive health in emergencies, with a focus on adolescent sexual and reproductive health
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Plan International will ensure that all its humanitarian programmes are at least 2a or 2b on the IASC gender marker and strive to go beyond 2b and become gender transformative where appropriate.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Plan International will increase its focus on addressing the needs and rights of girls across the humanitarian - development continuum. From the outset of crises it will consult, engage with and analyse the specific needs of girls and ensure that all its humanitarian programmes include specific outcomes which benefit girls.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind

    Core Commitments (3)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Empower Women and Girls as change agents and leaders, including by increasing support for local women's groups to participate meaningfully in humanitarian action.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the Outcome documents of their review conferences for all women and adolescent girls in crisis settings.
    • Leave No One Behind
    • Ensure that humanitarian programming is gender responsive.
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Equal Measures 2030, which is hosted by Plan International, and where Plan is one of the key partners, has been looking deeply using data and analysis to guide the reach of the Global Goals 2030.

    Further, Plan International has prioritised six areas of Global Distinctiveness, in order to opertionalise and achieve it's new Global Strategy. One of these key areas is around sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), where thinking is being centralised. A theory of change is being developed, and specific expertise and leadership around this is being recruited.

    As previously reported, all funding submissions are being rated against the Inter-Agency Standing Committee
    (IASC) Gender Marker and Plan International has made the commitment that all emergency response programmes will be rated at a minimum gender aware. All resilience building programmes aspire to be gender transformative.

    Plan International Headquarters has established a Programme and Influence Approach. The purpose of this is to establish a clear vision, direction, common language and consistent message for implementation of our programme and influence work, and align to our Global Strategy.

     

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    B. How are you assessing whether progress on commitments is leading toward change in the direction of the transformation?

    Tracking of funding submissions against the gender marker continues in each emergency response grant tracker.

    Systematic establishment of feedback and complaints mechanisms across all emergency responses that engage child friendly and child participatory methods with a gender lens.

    3. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Human resources/capacity
    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    Recruitment of Gender in Emergencies Specialist (budget dependent) to support on emergency response programming.

    Keywords

    Community resilience, Gender

  • 4A
    Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems

    Individual Commitments (2)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • In order to consistently implement quality humanitarian programmes, Plan International will adopt, use and monitor the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS), and implement the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and INEE Minimum Standards for Education.



    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    • Plan International will allocate dedicated resources to community engagement, provide information to and systematically collect feedback from affected people on the quality of our work, disaggregated by age and sex, and put in place institutional processes to receive, analyse, and act upon feedback.
    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    Core Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Adherence to quality and accountability standards (e.g. CHS, SPHERE)

    Plan International Federation undertook a Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Verification in August 2017. This process included an audit led by the HQAI firm. Plan International Headquarters and UK National Offices were both visited in December of 2017. The Ethiopia Country Office and related project sites was visited in November 2017, with the Myanmar Country Office visited in December. The preparation for this audit meant a database of over 350 documents were collated and categorised. The conclusions of the verification report will be published in 2018.

    Real-Time Reviews (undertaken for all large-scale emergency responses) have been redesigned to include specific references to the CHS Commitments. Additionally, the recommendations are now tracked against CHS Commitments at headquarter level.

    A consultant was recruited and a guidance note with accompanying tools from best practice for the production of child centred and child participatory feedback and complaints accountability mechanisms is in process.

     

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    B. How are you assessing whether progress on commitments is leading toward change in the direction of the transformation?

    As part of the CHS verification process Plan International will develop an action plan in 2018 which will detail the areas to prioritise for improvement. A self-assessment will be undertaken against this action plan in 2019, as part of the four year verification cycle. This is a formal assessment process that is submitted to the CHS Alliance

    3. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    • Field conditions, including insecurity and access
    • Human resources/capacity
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    Varying capacities dictate the extent to which CHS Commitments are systematically applied across the federation.

    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    As part of the CHS verification process, an Action Plan will be drafted to show organisational priorities against the areas of non-conformity. These will be built into the federation's annual planning. Two areas that will be prioritised are organisational learning - ensuring lessons learnt are integrated into new emergency responses. Additionally, the systematic roll out of new guidance and tools for child centred and child participatory feedback and complaints mechanisms in all emergency responses.

    Plan International will continue it's engagement in the Sphere Standards, and will adapt the current sex and age disaggregated data guidance note based on the revised guidelines from Sphere due in 2018.  

    Keywords

    Local action, Quality and accountability standards

  • 4B
    Anticipate, do not wait, for crises

    Core Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Plan International has redesigned and redeveloped it's Disaster Preparedness Process (DPP), which now focuses on readiness. This has been rolled out across the federation, and emphasises responsibility at country level.

    Plan International has also relaunched it's Emergency Roster in August 2017. This process has engaged all levels of the organisation - Country Offices, National and Regional Offices, as well as International Headquarters. This process followed an audit of internal capacity and current roster members. Emergency roster roles with terms of references were redesigned and launched for internal and external applications. It is hoped that this provides the organisation greater capacity and capability to respond to emergencies, effectively and efficiently, and to in turn build the resilience of communities as a key part of Plan International's emergency response. Further a Memoradum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with RedR to access their roster to boost capacity.

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    A new Building Better Partnerships initiative was launched at Plan International. In 2018 Plan International will discuss how this will be operationalised in an emergency setting. Further, partnerships is emergencies will be built into the Disaster Preparedness Process.

  • 4C
    Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • Plan International will continue to progressively align the objectives of its development and humanitarian work. This includes a commitment to integrate community resilience building into our longer-term development work and also reducing risk and vulnerability and building resilience as part of our humanitarian response programmes.
    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    Core Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to a new way of working that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years through the achievement of collective outcomes. To achieve this, commit to the following: a) Anticipate, Do Not Wait: to invest in risk analysis and to incentivize early action in order to minimize the impact and frequency of known risks and hazards on people. b) Reinforce, Do Not Replace: to support and invest in local, national and regional leadership, capacity strengthening and response systems, avoiding duplicative international mechanisms wherever possible. c) Preserve and retain emergency capacity: to deliver predictable and flexible urgent and life-saving assistance and protection in accordance with humanitarian principles. d) Transcend Humanitarian-Development Divides: work together, toward collective outcomes that ensure humanitarian needs are met, while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability over multiple years and based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors. The primacy of humanitarian principles will continue to underpin humanitarian action.
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Joined-up humanitarian-development analysis and planning towards collective outcomes

    The Safe Schools Global Programme which ended last year aimed to build resilience in the education sector, working with Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and education departments. During the past three years, Plan International reached nearly 1 million students from 33 countries in safe school activities. Plan International is now focusing on building resilience in fragile, conflict-affected countries, using the safe schools approach as its framework.

    Understanding that the new approach of resilience offers opportunities for new ways of working and improving programming in the communities, Plan International has ensured that resilience is a key approach in its 5-year Global Strategy, not only an approach in its development work but also bridges the development/humanitarian divide.

    Further, resilience is a key part of Plan International's areas of global distinctiveness to ensure that our development work in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), education, Child Protection (CP), Youth Education and Empowerment (YEE), Early Childhood Development (ECD) and participation is preparing children and communities for potential shocks and stresses.

    Other-4C

    Plan International is also increasing its work to get indicators to measure resilience. Particularly, it  will be working in El Salvador and Nicaragua, on implementing the Zurich Foundation Resilience Indicators that will allow to have first-hand insight of how it measures its own and how other community stakeholders measure increase community resilience.

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    B. How are you assessing whether progress on commitments is leading toward change in the direction of the transformation?

    • Plan International is developing a Monitoring and Evaluation framework which will include both development and humanitarian work.
    • Additionally, Plan International is developing indicators for resilience which can be applied in its 6 global networks.
    • The CHS verification process has also identified areas to prioritise.

    3. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Funding modalities (earmarking, priorities, yearly agreements, risk aversion measures)
    • Joined-up humanitarian-development analysis, planning, funding and/or response
    • Multi-stakeholder coordination
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    The current funding modalities assign grants to either humanitarian or development projects and there is limited funding for projects that aim to work in the nexus. This requires a shift in the way money is allocated and stronger collaboration.

    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    Plan International will develop a position paper on working in the nexus. Plan International will continue to work with its Country Offices to conduct joint analysis and outcomes and develop action plans

    Keywords

    Community resilience, Education, Gender, Humanitarian-development nexus