HOW WE APPLY PLAN'S PRINCIPLES IN OUR PROGRAM |
| Child Centredness |
Children are universally loved, though common beliefs and practices are not always in their best interest. The traditional culture is authoritarian and children have little vote in family and community-affairs. Preoccupation with bare subsistence blinds parents to seemingly luxurious concepts like 'children's rights' and the 'realization of human potential'.
PlanGuinea's commitment to Child Centredness informs all activities supported by PlanGuinea and partners and is overtly demonstrated by:
- Plan's 'vision/mission' animation sessions held in all affiliated communities;
- Children's rights' animation sessions held in all affiliated communities;
- Project financing decisions made on the basis of benefit-to-children.
Children are the priority target group of the Country Objectives:
- which focus on basic health and education.
The programs and projects which pursue these objectives are the product of causal and and cost/benefit analysis
- based upon years of experience of PlanGuinea and other partner organizations in Guinea.
Children had a direct input into the program planning-monitoring-evaluation process through the 'Children's Consultation' process.
The Child-to-Child program encourages children to research their own communities' problems and needs, to speak out at every forum and design their own micro projects. New IEC themes aimed at children and young adults will attempt to involve them far more in the community development process.
The 'graduate award' funds give children 'courage' to fight for their own learning rights and rewards those who are successful.
Gender Equity
From birth, girls receive less attention than do boys:
less education, less freedom of movement and association, less recreation.
Women have little voice or vote in family and community-affairs; income and expense sharing is weighted against them and they are overworked.
More than half of the adult male population has more than one wife. There is a serious shortage of female applicants for funded and volunteer positions; there are very few female-headed businesses to apply for project contracts.
PlanGuinea pursues women's equality and empowerment by maximizing their control, participation, awareness, access, and welfare in all PlanGuinea programs.
PlanGuinea is committed that:
- animation sessions present and discuss gender issues in all affiliated communities each year.
- community situation analysis and needs assessment sessions include a specific session for women.
- all community project management committees include women;
- girls are favored in FC-selection;
- women are favored in PlanGuinea's staff-hiring policy;
- Formal monitoring systems of women's participation will be established;
- All Country Programs and Project Outlines must describe in detail the impact of the project Program initiatives which provide direct benefit to girls and women.
Cooperation
PlanGuinea has a legion of direct partners including over 2000 community organizations, local delegations of key ministries, partner NGOs and civic committees as well as a wealth of contacts with other actors in the development process.
The CMT and advisory committees invest considerable time and energy in cultivating relationships and sharing information.
The aim of this process is to explain PlanGuinea's program approach, promote community views in important forums where they might otherwise be overlooked, identify common interests and opportunities for resource sharing, identify areas for expansion for key partner agencies and to avoid program and project duplication.
To improve this process a full-time information officer representing PlanGuinea and two partner agencies in Conakry was appointed in FY2000.
Examples of cooperation at institutional level include USAID (Girls Education project), World Bank (Community Capacity Building project), UNICEF (children's and women's rights campaigns; technical support), and AACG (community animation and training) amongst others.
Empowerment and Sustainability
Civil society is generally underdeveloped in Guinea; structures beyond village level, including NGOs, cooperatives, and private enterprises are incipient.
History, culture, and poverty have conspired to repress individual and collective initiative to improve the quality of life; women are particularly disadvantaged.
Empowerment and sustainability require that individuals and groups possess the desire the attitude and know-how, and the resources to take effective action. PlanGuinea's programs pursue these ends with a long-term view toward contributing toward empowerment and sustainability.
The community information and education training components are the bedrock of all the country programs.
Basic education and capacity building receive particular attention.
PlanGuinea strengthens local NGOs that provide essential services to the community
– by financing their training and equipment needs, by contracting their services
and by providing audit services and technical support.
Locally elected governments are strengthened, especially at CRD
–level (Communauté Rurale de Développement, 10-20,000 population
– the primary development unit in Guinea's burgeoning process of decentralization) with training in long
-term planning, needs assessment, project planning & administration, and through practical experience.
Almost all of PlanGuinea's budget and projects are community-managed.
PlanGuinea only supports interventions that are consistent with the long-term visions and missions of the relevant ministries. When the local government and economy are able to support the health and learning needs of children in Plan areas, phase out will begin – in practice this may take generations.
Environmental Sustainability
Poverty and need often overwhelm considerations of the environment. Current consumption is valued above future concerns, and environmental law is incipient. PlanGuinea:
- orients affiliated communities to assess their own management of the environment, through environment-IEC.
- assures professional design, siting, and construction of all physical infrastructure
- combining engineers' technical knowledge with communities' practical knowledge and aiming to minimize maintenance and running costs.
- finances projects in potable water and waste disposal.
- will cooperate with other organization's efforts to support any large scale natural resources recovery programs.
- will assist communities to ensure that their own views on forestry management and effective environmental practices are heard.
Institutional Learning
The aim of institution learning is to document and spread 'lessons learned' by self and others, and to put these lessons into practice. This should result in more effective programs at a lower cost.
Towards this end, PlanGuinea and partners are committed to:
- creating a working environment in which frank criticism and acute observation are rewarded and capitalized; to this end most key decisions are made in open forums.
- recruiting enough staff to 'allow planned time for learning' including planned reading days, special leaves, study trips, secondments and job-exchanges;
- evaluating all projects and programs, to explicitly identify 'lessons learned', to use pilots to test new approaches and to cancel project which are ineffective and not benefiting children.
- networking with other Plan COs and GO/NGOs – inside and outside Guinea
-to learn their 'lessons'.
- listening to communities and mobilize their expertise to identify the underlying problems and solutions.
- using professional technical assistance where most appropriate;
- supporting an established cycle of formal workshops and regular meetings for information exchange.
- ensuring that Plan and partner staff continue to get varied experiences.
- supporting the purchase and distribution of French-language reading materials.
- supporting regular office based language teaching.
- using the monthly newsletter to publicize both successes and failures to all actors.
- recruiting and promoting from within Plan and partner agencies as far as possible.
Learning by partner CBOs and NGOs, and by Plan, is a benefit of 'Cooperation'.
Integration
There is a Plan-financed manager in each geographic zone to assure unified program coordination supported by the Country Offices program support services.
A cycle of monthly meetings at zone and CO level ensures that all Plan and partner staff are aware of all Plan interventions.
The monthly newsletter 'Partenariat' keeps all the actors informed with a distribution
of 2,500 copies.
All programs are implemented using the community managed project system which in turn supports the Community Capacity Building program.
