Woking, United Kingdom · Established 1937
Plan International
Equality for girls.
(About)
Advancing children's rights and equality for girls in 80+ countries.
Plan International was founded in 1937 by the British journalist John Langdon-Davies and the refugee worker Eric Muggeridge as 'Foster Parents Plan for Children in Spain', to help children orphaned or displaced by the Spanish Civil War. The child-sponsorship model they invented — an individual donor supporting a specific named child and their community — remains a distinctive part of the organisation's fundraising.
Plan is now a federation of more than twenty national organisations, coordinated by its Global Hub in Woking, United Kingdom, working in around 80 countries. Since a strategic shift in the early 2010s the federation has explicitly framed itself as a girls' rights organisation, and its programmes are designed to be gender-transformative — that is, to change the underlying norms that keep girls out of school, in early marriage or unsafe work.
Alongside sponsorship-linked community development, Plan is a large humanitarian actor in child protection in emergencies and runs the long-running 'State of the World's Girls' research series.
(Verified profile)
What the record actually says.
Sourced from official reports & independent registers
Structure & mandate
Federation of 20+ national organisations founded 1937 (originally 'Foster Parents Plan for Children in Spain'). Global Hub in Woking, UK.
Key public programmes
- ▸Girls' rights and gender-transformative programming
- ▸Sponsorship-linked community development
- ▸Child protection in emergencies
Founded
1937
HQ
Woking
United Kingdom
Countries of work
10+
Primary sources
Independent registers
Independent verification
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(Work in the field)
Photos of their work.
Sourced from Wikimedia Commons
(Where we operate)
Active in 10 countries.
- Ethiopia
- Uganda
- Ghana
- Nepal
- Bangladesh
- Colombia
- Bolivia
- Egypt
- Philippines
- Kenya
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