Growing Up in Asia: Plan’s Strategic Framework for Fighting Child Poverty in Asia 2005 - 2015

This 55-page document from Plan International is a strategic framework that was developed to provide Plan staff, and all who work with or contribute to Plan, a single reference that captures the main issues likely to affect economically poor children in Asia in the next 10 years, and Plan's responses in the region. It illustrates the scope of interventions needed, overall priorities and key challenges, but also provides for flexibility and cooperation among different stakeholders. According to the document, it is not a "plan" with targets, to be implemented, monitored and evaluated. Rather, staff in Plan country operations - together with children, their families and communities, and partner organisations - will decide how to address the issues raised in this framework in a way that best responds to local needs and opportunities.

This framework is organised into three chapters. The first examines the magnitude of child poverty in Asia, its micro and macro causes and why it persists. The second chapter looks in more detail at the key aspects of Asian child poverty, and what Plan in Asia needs to do over the next 10 years to fight it effectively. The third chapter looks at the challenges Plan faces over the next 10 years as an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating in Asia.

According to the report, growing up in Asia over the next ten years will be a significant challenge for many children. Of the 1.27 billion children in Asian developing countries,
600 million or almost 50%, will be severely deprived of some of their basic needs - food, safe water, sanitation, health services, shelter, education services and information.
This is largely due to a combination of the pressure of population growth on scarce resources; lack of access to education, healthcare, clean water and sanitation; caste discrimination and dominance by social elites; as well as weak governance and corruption. However, another factor of this economic poverty is how children are treated by the adults and institutions around them. Girls often do not go to school, not because of the lack of a school, but because of the attitudes of their parents.

The report highlights the need to transform attitudes to children and for society to change the way it treats them. It goes on to outline Plan's child centred community development (CCCD) approach. It is a rights-based approach in which children, families and communities are active and leading participants in their own development. This involves:

• children taking part in decisions that affect them
• community members developing their skills
• collaborating with groups who share the same goals
• extending successful solutions to reach as many communities as possible
• working to change people's attitudes and behaviour and
• persuading governments to apply more child-friendly policies

Plan will use the CCCD approach to tackle different aspects of children’s poverty:

• their lack of resources and access to essential services which Plan will address through its interventions on household economic security; child health; water and
  environmental sanitation; and education.
• how adults treat children with emphasis on interventions to protect women, girls and boys, and particularly children with disabilities working children, trafficked children or children at risk of being trafficked, children affected by HIV/AIDS and children affected by conflicts or disasters.

This strategic framework identifies challenges that Plan in Asia will need to overcome to achieve these aspirations over the next 10 years. Key among them include: ensuring the involvement of children in programmes; expanding operations into poorer countries and areas, and enabling operations in richer areas to evolve and become independent; raising resources from non-poor Asian citizens; becoming a recognised Asian NGO and advocating on the fundamental causes of child poverty.

Cost: Free

Number of pages:89

Publisher: Plan International