Plan International launches alumni network for former sponsored children
Plan International, an international NGO, has launched a campaign to enable former sponsored children by the NGO to help advance children’s rights campaign as well as contribute their quote to the development of their communities and countries.
Dubbed: “Mobilising Alumni Scale Up”, the initiative will help Plan International to reconnect and engage former sponsored children as well as programme or club beneficiaries to help amplify the work of the organisation, particularly in the areas of preventing forced and child marriages, child abuse as well as to promote children's rights.
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Alumni network
The initiative will also help the former Plan International sponsored children to act as active drivers of change in their communities through advocacy and influencing as well as contribute to the Global strategy of 100 million reasons.
The Mobilising Alumni initiative was first piloted in Ghana and Niger for a period of four months.
With funding from Plan International’s Global Innovation Hub, the initiative is currently being scaled up to other countries in West and Central Africa (WACA), Middle East, Eastern and Southern Africa (MEESA), Asia-Pacific (APAC) and beyond.
The new countries which have been added to the initiative are Senegal Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.
The vision of the initiative is to have footprints of the Mobilising Alumni engagement across all Plan International operational areas and build a global movement of Alumni to engage advocacy and influencing and help amplify the work of the organisation.
Launch
Speaking during the launch via Zoom on Tuesday, June 29, 2021, the Executive Director for Plan International West and Central Africa (WACA), Mr Rotimy Djossaya, said Plan International intended to make the alumni network a global movement in order to achieve greater impacts.
“We want to make this a global movement to be a platform for children’s rights,” urging alumni members to prioritise children’s rights in all their activities.
For him, social change could be realised through large mass of people and that the alumni network would help Plan International to achieve the needed change it intends to achieve.
Mr Djossaya said it was the goal of Plan International to increase the number of 10 countries currently having the alumni network to about 50 countries across the globe in the coming months.
He has, therefore, encouraged all the alumni members to find innovative ways of getting the organisation’s message to the larger societies through their activities and programmes.
Purpose
For her part, the Liberia Country Director of Plan International, Madam Miriam Murray noted that the purpose for the formation of the alumni network was to enable the former sponsored children by the organisation to give back to society.
She said “the initiative is to enable sponsored children to give back to society”, adding that “each and everyone of us has a duty, a responsibility and a role to play.”
For her, the alumni network was all about “coming together to show impact” and that the sponsored children are going to be goodwill ambassadors of the organisation who were to go back to their respective governments and communities to cause positive change in the lives of others.
The Country Director of Plan Ghana, Mr Solomon Tesfamariam, stressed the need to grow the network at the regional and global levels, pointing out that the network has the potential to create positive impacts in the respective communities and countries of the former sponsored children by the organisation.
Objectives
The Regional Alumni Network Coordinator, Julius Kudzordzi said the vision of the alumni network was to form a global movement of Plan International alumni to advocate on critical issues of concerns to young people, particularly girls and engage alumni in Plan’s programming and sponsorship activities.
He noted that the network would also be used to advance the rights of children and girls as well as to champion gender equality.
For him, the initiative would further be used to engage in impactful advocacy, aimed at influencing activities resulting in needed change.
Mr Kudzordzi further noted that the alumni network was also intended to contribute towards girls’ empowerment agenda and Plan’s global ambition.