ARCHIVED

Empowerment of women and girls

Plan International is committed to global and national coordination of Education in Emergencies (EiE). At a global level Plan International is active in a variety of important EiE networks, including the Inter-Agency Network for EiE three Working Groups and the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack’s Steering Committee. Plan is also actively collaborating with the Education Cluster at a global and national level. Plan co-leads the Education Cluster in seven countries at national or district level.

Empowering women and girls is at the centre of our EiE and Child Protection in Emergencies (CPiE) approach. In Plan International we are working in and with communities. This enables us to include women and girls in our planning and implementation. By providing girls with access to quality education Plan International are creating a future where women will become change agents and leaders. By including women and girls in decision making and in power roles such as teachers and headmasters Plan International demonstrate that women can participate, lead change and serve as role models for younger girls.

Plan International has also developed The Adolescent Girls in Emergencies Program Framework that builds on their capacities and promotes their meaningful participation.

Sexual and reproductive health

Plan International has developed a tool to assess Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) needs in the early stages of a crisis. This has been piloted in emergency responses in Indonesia and Cameroon. The information is used to refine the contents of the dignity kits ensuring they are culturally appropriate and meet the specific needs identified by women and girls in that crisis. A short report is developed and shared with peer agencies and the clusters in order to influence the practice of others’ to meet the needs effectively.

The provision of dignity kits is increasingly a focus on Plan International’s emergency response work.

Gender equality programming

Plan International's funding tracker template has been revised to capture the gender marker classification for all funds secured for a response. This provides transparency within the organisation and holds us to account for meeting our stated objective of being gender aware in all emergency response. Gender is a focus of all real time reviews to determine how a Country Office has approached gender in the response, providing a country office with feedback so that course correction can be made if required.

Gender is a core component of the roster learning event, supporting roster members ensure a strong gender focus to our operations and that we reach 2a or 2b.

Plan has developed a Adolescent Girls in Emergencies Programme Framework, including tools, methodologies, theory of change and results framework. Plan is also part of the Girls in Emergencies Collaborative, and has partnered with Women's Refugee Council to ensure collaboration on strengthening evidence and policies to protect and empower refugee and internally displaced girls and ensure their right to protection from gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health care and to economic and social empowerment. 

Plan Child Protection team has developed a competency framework which will include a Gender Transformative Programming Competency for Child Protection Specialists and development of related training session.

Other

Plan International commissioned a series of three research reports on Adolescent Girls in Crisis, in South Sudan, the Lake Chad Region and Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. The research drawn directly on the voices and experiences of girls in each context and provides recommendations on how the humanitarian community can support the needs of girls in protracted crises.

Plan International have also prioritised advocacy with and for girls and young women in crisis within our International Advocacy Strategy (2018 – 2020). During 2018, Plan International worked to influence the Global Compact on Refugees to secure clear references to gender and to the needs of girls and young women in particular, and contributed to the civil society effort to secure the Charlevoix declaration on girls’ education in crisis during the G7 summit in Canada.

Disaster risk reduction and disaster risk management (including resilience)

With a revised definition of resilience and strengthening of our resilience approach, Plan International has been able to explore concrete ways of including resilience in all our core thematic areas in both development and humanitarian programmes. This is through enabling factors which can be included in all aspect of the project cycle, in strategy processes and thematic work. Challenges of doing this are that it can be difficult to include resilience strengthening in other thematic areas when it is not their priority, so we need to also influence donors on the importance of including resilience. Minimal tools of how to integrate resilience in all aspects of Plan's work, but this is being addressed and will have an interactive package by the end of the year.