Projects: Emergency hunger relief, Keep girls in school and Protect Rohingya children
Location: Africa and Bangladesh
Plan International is a charity for girls’ equality. They tackle the root causes of poverty, support communities through crisis, campaign for gender equality, and help governments do what’s right for children and particularly for girls.
On the 1st of March 2023, our CEO and Founder, Jeremy Meltzer, spoke with Dave Husy, Deputy CEO of Impact and Sara Sinada, Disaster & Risk Program Manager in our Impact Leaders Series webinar on the unfolding hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, and how NGOs respond to immediate disasters like the earthquake in Syria.
“We do what we do so babies can survive their first 1000 days, so children can learn in safe environments, so girls can live and work without discrimination, so young people can standup for their rights, and so all children can break free from poverty.”
Key insights
Where did Sara’s passion for social justice come from? Was it a moment – or series of moments?
Sara Sinada:
I’m originally from Sudan, I was born in Tunisia and I grew up in a number of other countries. So I consider myself a global child, but that’s affected me in many ways. I think at a very young age, I was exposed to grave inequalities from all these travels.
From a very young age, I saw these grave inequalities and I realised that this cannot be right and just felt the need to come into the space that I am in now and try to achieve more equality.
I think it comes from the fact that I’ve recognised my privilege at a very young age. And I think we’re all born with some privileges and it’s really important to realise that we can use our privileges to empower others. Use our privilege to see power in other places.
What’s currently happening in the Horn of Africa?
Dave Husy:
There is a global hunger crisis actually that involves other countries that include countries like Haiti, Niger, Burkina Faso and so on. In the Horn, what we’re seeing is the result of what we might call kind of like five Cs.
So there’s been conflict across a number of these countries that have really displaced people and disrupted supply chains around food. Second would be climate. We’ve had climatic impact, so failed production cycles, in some cases, ironically, floods, also destroying kind of productive capacity.
But largely speaking, there’s been an extended period of droughts across a number of countries that are actually adjacent to each other as well. Other Cs might include, for instance, what we might call commodities. So what we’ve seen more recently, and this is where Ukraine does have an impact, is commodity prices have made food inaccessible to communities, particularly that are struggling for the basics. So what we’ve seen is food prices have increased quite dramatically across the region and we’re having difficulties of access. Actually, supply chains are breaking down. So when we say that, what we mean is when you see those news reports about grain coming out of Ukraine, Ukraine is pretty much a breadbasket for many countries
Other C’s is COVID. We’ve got a post-COVID effect in the sense that many of these economies were actually evolving and improving over time. Ethiopia, for instance, had a 9% increase in its global national income year on year before COVID, and that has been severely impacted.
$30 provides life-saving food and helps keep girls in school, $25 provides access to menstrual hygiene management that secures a girl’s education, and $25 keeps Rohingya children safe from trafficking
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