Plan International USA is an international development and humanitarian nonprofit that partners with supporters, adolescent girls and children around the world to overcome oppression and gender inequality with dignity, opportunity and safety. It is part of Plan International, a global nonprofit federation. Plan works to tackle the root causes of poverty by working side by side with communities, organizations and governments. Their headquarters is located in Warwick, Rhode Island.
History
Plan was founded in 1937 by British journalist John Langdon-Davies and refugee worker Eric Muggeridge. Originally named "Foster Parents Plan for Children in Spain", the aim was to provide food, accommodation, and education to children whose lives had been disrupted by the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War, under the name "Foster Parents Plan for War Children", the organization expanded to work with displaced children throughout war-torn Europe. By the 1970s, Plan gradually began working with children throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Plan International USA was originally incorporated as "Foster Parents Plan, Inc." in 1939 in New York to help connect U.S. donors to a continuously growing number of sponsored children in developing countries. It was one of the first Plan International federation members. Plan's programs are implemented in more than 50 developing countries. In 1974, the international parent organization Foster Parents Plan shortened its name to become simply Plan International. In the 1990s the U.S. organization followed suit, with a name change to "Childreach/Plan International" and eventually this was simplified to "Plan International USA".
Finances
Plan International USA is a publicly funded American non-profit charitable organization, deriving its income from a combination of individual contributions and private and federal grants. It is exempt from both U.S. federal and Rhode Island state income tax. The total operating revenue in 2019 for the organization was approximately $68 million. The global Plan federation reported that 78 percent of the organization's funding went to programs, while 22 percent was reported as support for programming through fundraising and administrative expenses.
Campaigns and Reports
was an international campaign by Plan International that addressed the issue of gender discrimination around the world. The goal of the campaign was to promote the rights of girls and bring millions of girls out of poverty around the world. It was part of the organization's broader international development work. The campaign focused on lack of equality faced by girls in developing countries and promoted projects to improve opportunities for girls in education, health care, family planning, legal rights, and other areas. In September 2018, Plan released a report titled "The State of Gender Equality for U.S. Adolescents". The report was covered by several media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes. It highlighted how adolescents in the U.S. think about gender equality and what shapes those views. The report release was named Media Relations campaign of the year by PR Daily. In August 2019, Plan announced it largest individual gift in the organizations history. The gift will fund a program model called GirlEngage, which aims to challenge social and gender norms, send more girls to school and work to keep girls safe in their communities. Plan will use GirlEngage to partner with girls around the world to understand their needs and the issues they face. This girl-centered approach amplifies the voices of vulnerable and marginalized girls by including them in all stages of a project life-cycle – from defining the problem to program evaluation.
Programs
In coordination with Plan International and its other chapters, Plan International USA helped fund and organize the following combined international programs and activities in 2019:
40 million children benefited from Plan's work.
1.2 million children were sponsored.
Partnered with 34,814 organizations.
2,000 take overs took place in 60 countries for International Day of the Girl where girls took over the roles of prime ministers, mayors, CEOs, and other leaders.
Responded to disasters in 34 countries.
Plan works in more than 75 countries. A few examples Plan’s work are listed below.
In the Philippines, Plan is implementing the Marawi Response Project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is assisting with humanitarian and recovery work in and around Marawi.
Along with partner Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Plan is supporting menstrual hygiene management projects that touch the lives of 1.6 million people in Latin America.
In the Central Africa Republic, Plan is reuniting children who were separated during conflict with their families with funding from the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance.
Child sponsorship
The child sponsorship program links each sponsor to an individual child in one of more than 50 developing countries where Plan International works. Sponsors contribute money and have an opportunity to correspond with the child and his or her family. Donations are not given directly to the child but are used to support projects for entire communities. Along with microloans, direct sponsorship projects have been described to be an option for people interested in contributing to a do it yourself style of foreign aid. Many notable people sponsor more than 1.2 million children with Plan International, including New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof visited a child he sponsored in the Dominican Republic, a trip he wrote about in one of his columns, while pointing out the benefits of child sponsorship programs. The effectiveness of Plan's child sponsorship program was studied by RMIT University through an analysis titled Changing Lives: An Analysis of Child Sponsorship Data. The report looked at more than 12 million surveys from 2.7 million sponsored children over several years. Key findings include that more children attend school in sponsored communities than in non-sponsored communities, that school attendance rises every year Plan works in a community and most children have more access to improved water and sanitation.
On November 26, 2019, a press release announced the appointments of James Michel, Grace Miner and Deborah Simpson to the board. In 2020, Erin Chatman also joined the board. The board has included at least one youth representative since 2015.
Youth engagement
Plan includes young people in its strategy and governance structures. Plan’s Youth Advisory Board is a youth-led group that advises the organization on projects and participates in events The Youth Advisory Board runs an annual Youth Leadership Academy, a summer program for high schoolers to learn about and take on global issues in their schools and communities. Youth Advisory Board members are active participants in International Day of the Girls activities, which is an annual day of recognition. Girls take over positions of leadership for a day at organizations such as ABC Network, Facebook, The Female Quotient and Viacom.
Notable associations
, Indian actress who rose to prominence in Slumdog Millionaire, became a Plan International USA ambassador supporting Plan's global campaign, Because I Am a Girl. Other notable persons who support Plan International USA include MSNBC anchor, Richard Lui, Olympic swimming gold medalist, Summer Sanders Schlopy; and German model, philanthropist, and activist, Toni Garrn, among others.
The organization was featured in the 2002 film About Schmidt and Girl Rising in 2013. The organization is also featured in the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, published in 2009.
