Plan International

This post is a little late, but while in Jakarta, I took myself out of my comfort zone a little bit and turned up at the NGO, Plan International, without an appointment or any advance communication. The great staff accommodated me, despite my lack of speaking Indonesian, and eventually I got to speak to a few people from the company to give me a bit more of an insight into the projects that they do. Their focus is on children and youth, which felt very important to me, as it was the day after I visited the children in the slum. This fantastic organisation has projects such as youth empowerment, and sanitation, in order to help enable children to have a better life.

How can projects like this help in the development of a city? How much of the expansions of cities depends on wide scale development strategies, and how much on small, community projects?

This post aims to give a brief explanation of the ongoing projects, as well as how they relate to my own research. More depth can be found on the Plan International website.

YOUTH ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

This project focuses on helping to provide people (aged 15-24) access to better job opportunities. This is for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially women, as they are often left behind with few chances to be independent. There are four parts to this project: pre-employment training; technical vocational training (TVET); micro-enterprise development (MED); and support to micro finance.

By empowering young people, there is a wider range of opportunities available to them, which will then be beneficial to the wider economy. Many of these people have a poor access to education, which limits the type of job they will be able to get in the future. With training and support, they can go on to feel vital roles in the economy, benefiting themselves, their family and the community.

WASH (Water, Sanitation And Hygiene)

This project is aimed at the poorest communities, who have been marginalised due to gender, religion and other socio-economic discrimination. Poor sanitation in these communities is due to lack of education in hygiene practices, as well as poor infrastructure, leading to high levels of disease. Improved levels of health have knock on impacts in other aspects of their livelihood. If the child mortality rate is decreased, there will be a reduced 'need' for having more children per family, as each child would have a much higher chance of survival. In turn, this would potentially lead to higher levels of education, as it is cheaper to send less children to school.

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT

Disaster risk management needs to be in place before and after a disaster occurs. Increasing awareness of the signs of a disaster, and what to do during one, can hugely decrease the number of casualties. Effective infrastructure and design also plays a key role in reducing the impacts of a natural disaster, for example, buildings which can sustain earthquake shaking, or buildings raised above the ground in flood prone areas. Without adequate education, these are often ignored in favour of economic purposes, or simply through ignorance.

CHILD PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION

This program focuses on protecting children from violence, and also helps with getting birth registration, which is often neglected. Without this, children can become vulnerable to human trafficking, child marriage, and underage labour. In these situations, children already have such a negative and disadvantaged start to life, that it is hard to change in the future.