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Self Report 2017

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.

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1C
Remain engaged and invest in stability

Individual Commitment

  • 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 Commitment

  • 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

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    Plan International recognises that there is a gap in humanitarian programming in conflict affected and fragile states, in particular protracted crises, prioritising child rights, especially those of girls. To this end the organisation is committed to increasing presence and capacity within these unstable environments. The has become an organisational priority with Plan International's Global Strategy.

  • Achievements at a glance

    Plan International has now established a sub-regional response in Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon looking at the protracted conflict and internally displaced and refugee movement across the Lake Chad Basin.

    Plan International has now established programmes in the Middle East, with a regional staff members operating out of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

    Additional humanitarian responses are involving protracted crises such as Myanmar and South Sudan. Further investment into specialists in conflict affected states is also being considered at headquarters level for the next financial year.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    Assessing programme quality across responses in conflict and fragile states. A lessons learnt and reflections exercise will be conducted to discuss the merits of a sub-regional response in the West Africa region.

    Monitoring and Evaluation systems are in place for each response - looking at complaints and feedback mechanisms and how the organisation adapts programming accordingly.

    A reflection exercise was undertaken internally for establishing programmes in the Middle East; lessons learnt from this exercise were taken forward into further operations in the region.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    Establishing offices in the Middle East, in particular Jordan, was challenging due to the necessary internal and external legal requirements. This official registration process took much longer than expected, and the organisation will learn from this when opening operations in new countries and regions. An internal lessons learnt document was produced having interviewed key stakeholders within the organisation.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    It is hoped that conflict specialists will be recruited to guide and provide strategic leadership on conducting programming in conflict affected and fragile states.

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Accountability to affected people ☑ IDPs ☑ Refugees

3D
Empower and protect women and girls

Individual Commitment

  • 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 Commitment

  • 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

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    Plan International recognises that women and girls are most vulnerable during a humanitarian crisis, and that there is not a systematic recognition of girls' specific needs during emergencies. In order to ensure the rights of children, in particular girls, are met, Plan International has developed a new strategy that reasserts the organisation's focus on children, especially girls. Plan International IS committed to taking on a leadership role in country and regional level protection clusters, strengthening cross-sectoral coordination.

  • Achievements at a glance

    Plan International has committed to taking leadership positions within child protection clusters at national and regional levels; additionally it is a leading voice in the global protection fora.

    From the number of emergency responses in 2016 63% of these have child protection in emergencies programme components and 67% of these have education in emergencies programme components.

    Plan International has ensured there are gender experts throughout emergency response programmes, and is tracking the proposal submissions in accordance with the IASC gender marker. Plan International commits that humanitarian programmes are at least 2a or 2b, to become gender transformative where appropriate. For current responses, this equals 62% of programmes at 2a or 2b.

    Equal Measures 2030 dedicated team to provide data and analysis to monitor the SDG commitments has been established and lead by Plan International headquarters in conjunction with eight partners.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    Emergency programme interventions are recorded according to theme. Cluster engagement across specific sectors is also beginning to be recorded. All funding submissions for emergency programme proposals are being recorded against the IASC gender marker to ensure programmes meet the gender transformative requirements.

    Plan International Programme Quality Procedures measures programmes against four key areas - one of these is around the Child Centred Community Development Approach. These have to complement Gender Equality Policies. Each programme is required to adhere to the Programme Quality Guidelines

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    Rolling out all new requirements across all humanitarian responses which vary in geographic location and type of response.

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Gender ☑ People-centred approach

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

Individual Commitment

  • 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 Commitment

  • 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

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    Plan International did not have a systematic way of evaluating the Federation's performance and adherence to the humanitarian industry standards. Internally it was decided to undertake a self-assessment against the Core Humanitarian Standard to understand the organisation's strengths and weaknesses, and to make adaptions in accordance with findings. It was critical to ensure that the organisation could understand how, and to what extent it is complementing partners and working within the humanitarian sphere effectively.

  • Achievements at a glance

    Plan International UK has undertaken the self-assessment and submitted and presented this to DFID. Similarly, Plan International Germany has undertaken the benchmarking exercise in accordance with the CHS, with auditor HQAI, and this report has been fed back to GFFO. Three separate field locations and Country Offices were also evaluated as part of these assessments: Tanzania, Philippines and Nepal. The self-assessment conveyed the distinct areas of strength, and highlighted which commitments need to be prioritised in the next year through operations. Internal training on the CHS has been rolled out in three of the four Plan International regions.
    The self-assessment and benchmarking exercises in Plan International UK and Germany have formed the basis of a Plan International Federation wide self-assessment that has been conducted in early 2017.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    A spreadsheet of those country offices and national organisations as part of the Plan International Federation who have been part of the self-assessment process and have created an improvement plan, is being recorded. Progress will be recorded against improvement plans.

    Investments are being made into the feedback and complaints mechanisms from communities, CHS Commitment 5. This feedback will be analysed for improvements and progress. Additionally, each emergency response is required to collect and submit sex and age disaggregated data as a minimum. The adherence and operationalization of this is being recorded per response and region.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    CHS Self-Assessment process is a very lengthy and time consuming one for those staff members involved; investment of time and money needs to be considered during each reflection cycle.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    Steps towards CHS Verification for the Plan International Federation have begun in 2017. This process will culminate in beginning the assessment in conjunction with HQAI at the end of 2017 calendar year.

    Federation-wide sex and age disaggregated parameters are being rolled out across all emergency and long term development programmes in accordance with Plan International's new Global Strategy.

    Plan International is also looking at investing into innovative feedback and complaints mechanisms with communities, in particular Accountability to Affected People surveys.

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Accountability to affected people ☑ People-centred approach

4B
Anticipate, do not wait, for crises

Core Commitment

  • 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

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    Understanding that the relatively new approach of resilience offers many opportunities for new ways of working and improving programming in the communities we support, we have ensured resilience is a key approach in our new 5-year Global Strategy, and that it is not only an approach in our development work but also bridges the development/humanitarian divide. We appreciate that humanitarian needs far outweigh our capacity to respond and we must therefore find an effective approach to ensure communities are stronger, safer and better equipped to positively deal with disturbances. Empowering communities and ensuring their involvement in decision-making before and after shocks and stresses is key to achieving this and building resilience.

  • Achievements at a glance

    Community resilience has been recognised as a key approach in our new global strategy, encouraging all countries in which we work to consider ways of integrating resilience within their strategic objectives and subsequent implementation at community level in both humanitarian and development contexts.

  • Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

    ☑4A - Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems

4C
Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides

Individual Commitment

  • 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 Commitment

  • 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

  • What led your organization to make the commitment?

    Plan International recognises that development and humanitarian work is ‘siloed’ and sector-specific. Research shows that this is not sufficiently effective in building the resilience of communities to multiple risks. Understanding that the new approach of resilience offers opportunities for new ways of working and improving programming in the communities we support, we have ensured resilience is a key approach in our 5-year Global Strategy, not only an approach in our development work but also bridges the development/humanitarian divide.

  • Achievements at a glance

    Plan International is implementing the BRACED project in Rakhine State, Myanmar; a Community Resilience Assessment and Action Handbook was developed, providing guidance for stakeholders on how to collect and analyse data that can be used to assess the resilience of a community in order to define specific interventions that will strengthen resilience. Plan International’s Safe Schools Global Programme which began in 2014, aims to build resilience of children by strengthening the education system.

    June - December 2016 our safe schools work reached 531 schools and 803,991 students. From the start of the programme to December 2016 we have worked in 35 countries to enhance the resilience of children, schools and where possible the education system to shocks and stresses reaching 4,316 schools and 1,712,371 students.

  • How is your organization assessing progress

    For safe schools work, we collect number of schools and students supported globally every 6 months. We are in the process of developing resilience indicators which can be used throughout Plan International by project staff to measure community resilience, additionally ensuring resilience indicators will be incorporated into global monitoring and evaluation processes across all areas of global distinctiveness, to facilitate the integration of resilience in key development and humanitarian areas.

  • Challenges faced in implementation

    The main challenge in resilience is ensuring project and partner staff, communities and local government understand the concept. Often resilience is still seen as DRR or CCA as this is historically how staff have worked in disasters. Measuring resilience is also a challenge, given we are trying to measure resilience to events that have not yet occurred. There are many tools and indicators available but it is important to recognise that communities and local staff cannot be expected to measure progress against up to 90-100 indicators, for resilience alone.

  • Next step to advance implementation in 2017

    - Develop resilience indicators for use throughout Plan International
    - Map how resilience has been incorporated into Country Strategies throughout Plan International
    - Revise resilience toolkit
    - Start implementation of a new flood resilience project in Central America, and use key approaches and lessons learnt in BRACED projects to improve our resilience approach

  • Cross cutting issues

    ☑Disaster Risk Reduction ☑ Innovation

  • Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

    ☑3E - Eliminate gaps in education for children, adolescents and young people ☑ 4A - Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems ☑ 4B - Anticipate, do not wait, for crises