The Hardest Job

Posted by Plan International USA board member, Georgiana Gibson

How many times have you heard that parenting is the hardest job? Also the most rewarding, but certainly difficult, time consuming, fulfilling and joyous. Parenting is the only job in which the goal of the job is to make yourself obsolete.

Imagine yourself a parent in a place where the educational system is so overcrowded that in the public school system your child only goes to school for a few hours a day to allow other children to be “educated” in later shifts. There are no playgrounds, and at a brief recess the children play on concrete or dirt with the very few toys they have.

The schools are surrounded by high, cinder block fences with large rolling gates and concertina wire on top of all the walls. Electricity is sometimes on, other times not. There are few supplies, books, libraries, extra-curricular activities, or enrichment programs. Sounds pretty hopeless, doesn’t it?

Food Crisis in the Sahel

Posted by Rhéal Drisdelle, director, Plan Niger

As the G8 leaders sit down at Camp David this week, it is to be hoped that the attention of the world’s media won’t be on what they will be eating or what their partners are wearing as has happened at previous summits. If, as is expected, a new food security and nutrition initiative is to be announced, then this is the real story, at least for millions of people across the Sahel region currently at risk of chronic malnutrition.

In Niger last year 300,000 children were treated for severe malnutrition – an astonishing 15% of all children treated for malnutrition worldwide. And that was before the onset of the so-called “hungry season” which this year has come early due to a complex set of factors afflicting the region that I’ve written about here before.

A little spicy, but delicious

Posted by Lisa Lozeau, Senior Marketing Manager

Last night I attempted my second culinary experiment with a dish from Indonesia that was chosen as the second most delicious food in the world by CNN International. The dish is called Nasi Goreng and in addition to its CNN fame, it is also the national dish of Indonesia. As you can imagine this set a high bar for the expectation that it would be good, so I was a little nervous.

The dish calls for cold long-grain rice, so I prepared that the night before without incident. My only concern was that it called for .77lbs of rice. I wasn’t sure if that was dry or cooked so I used three cups, which made enough to nearly fill a 2.5 quart pan. The rest of the cooking was pretty straight forward. I made an omelet and set it aside, then proceed to chop the leek, onion, garlic and chilies. I got a little fancy and decided to use the bottom halve of two leeks chopped into matchstick size strips, instead of using one whole leek with the tough leaves at the top and I diced the onions and garlic.

Plan Youth at the InterAction Forum

Posted by Dounia Bredes, Youth Outreach and Marketing Coordinator for Plan International USA

Just last week, I had the honor of hosting two young people from El Salvador as they participated in the InterAction Forum, a conference of international development organizations. Ana and Eduardo were chosen to represent Plan’s work because of their leadership, public speaking skills, and passion for youth empowerment. I was chosen to host them because I work on the Youth Engagement team here at Plan International USA. Anything to do with youth engagement--anytime, anywhere--involves me and my team. (Did I mention that I love my job?)



On the second day of Forum, in front of a large room filled with development professionals, three young women took the stage--one from Egypt, one from Afghanistan, and Ana from El Salvador. They were the young panelists invited to speak about "Youth, Gender, and Political Change" in their home countries.

Adventures in Cultural Cooking

Posted by Lisa Lozeau, Senior Marketing Manager

Last weekend I attempted to make a traditional meat stew from Sierra Leone. If you are hosting a House Party for us, you've probably seen this recipe so if you've tried it, let us know how yours came out!

The recipe seemed pretty simple: beef, garden eggs (aka eggplant), onion, tomato and some seasoning.

You start by boiling the beef in water and then adding six – yes six – eggplants. Keep an eye on the beef. To my surprise it was prone to boiling over. While the beef was boiling I cubed the eggplant. I’m not sure what size or kind of eggplant they use in Sierra Leone, but I could only fit 3-4 of the purple kind in my soup pot. I Googled “garden eggs” and there are small white eggplant that do look like eggs so maybe the recipe meant six of those.

Will the world answer West Africa's call for help?

Posted by Dualta Roughneen, Plan Ireland's Food Crisis Response Coordinator for the West Africa region.

With just 35% of the funds raised needed to avert a full-scale food crisis in West Africa, it’s time for the world to act.

West Africa is not a place that many people are too familiar with. People have heard of places like Liberia and Sierra Leone, primarily for negative reasons such as war and child soldiers. But how many know where Niamey is? Are there many who can pronounce Ouagadougou?

The world will soon find out. Niger and much of the Western Sahel basin, stretching from Senegal to Chad is approaching a food and nutrition crisis. Around 13 million people are already affected by food insecurity and more than 1 million children under 5 years are expected to suffer from moderate acute malnutrition.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and the Gambia have declared a crisis and called for international assistance.

Working to exit

Posted by Tessie San Martin - Plan International USA CEO/President

This week I am in the Dominican Republic, where I lived and worked in the late 80s. A lot has changed, much very positive. Per capita income is over $3,500 a year, literacy rates among youth are over 95% and well of 90% of communities, urban and rural, have access to safe water.

Plan International is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the Dominican Republic this year. While much progress has been made in the last quarter century, there are persistent pockets of poverty, primarily in the southwest of the country. And the recent influx of Haitians across the border after the earthquake in that neighboring country has taxed already overburdened social services in that region to a breaking point. So there is no question that much work remains to be done. But it doesn't need to all be done by Plan. Our approach in the DR is very specifically designed to enable Plan to exit. The Dominican Republic illustrates well how Plan is adapting its approach as the country develops.

Don't subject your girls to the knife

Posted by Dona Tchamo, a 67-year-old mother from Guinea-Bissau, who used to carry out female genital mutilation (FGM) on young girls. Today she explains what made her stop and why she now works with Plan to advocate against the practice.

For many years, I practiced female genital mutilation on girls. Sometimes, I would travel far from my village to perform ceremonies on girls, as far away as Senegal or Mauritania. FGM can mean the partial or total removal of all external genitalia as part of the process towards womanhood.

Being subjected to the knife is viewed as proper; a good tradition and a rite of passage and acceptance by many communities. I am Muslim, and for many years this practice was forced upon Muslim women. But now many see it as part of their tradition and culture; they accept it, proudly subjecting their young daughters to the knife.

Plan's "So, What About Boys?" report launched at USAID

Posted by Su Balasubramanian, Plan International USA's Because I am a Girl Manager

Each year Plan International publishes its Because I am a Girl report on the state of the world’s girls. The 2011 report, "So, What About Boys?", which explores the integral role that men and boys must play as allies and agents for social change, continues to capture the attention of partner organizations and leading donors in the international development space.

On the heels of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID’s) release of its new Gender Equality policy, the first in almost 30 years, Plan International’s "So, What About Boys?" enjoyed yet another center-stage appearance that the agency. This past Monday, March 26, Plan International USA launched the report at USAID.

15 Years...Can Change a World

Posted by Tessie San Martin - Plan International USA CEO/President


Two weeks ago I traveled to Gazipur District to see our child protection work. Gazipur district is in the central part of Bangladesh. It is just 30km or so from Dhaka the capital, and growing fast. While more and more it is becoming an extension of the country's capital, Dhaka (1 out of every 5 inhabitants in Bangladesh live in Dhaka), today it continues to be quite rural.

Plan has been in Gazipur for 15 years. Over this time, we have made a significant difference. With our encouragement, the communities where we work have created Village Development Committees (VDCs). These bring together adults from all social strata, united by their concern for the safety and health of their children. In addition, Plan has encouraged the formation of Children Organizations. The COs and VDCs take a leadership role identifying and prioritizing the village needs and developing action plans to address them.