Strategy
Children in the Philippines marching against child labour Plan Philippines’ Country Strategic Plan aims to ensure that all children realise their rights.
In the Philippines, poverty deprives millions of children of their rights to safe drinking water, food, sanitation facilities, shelter, health care, education and information.
Around a third of school-aged children work as child labourers - 63% are boys and 37% are girls. Child domestic workers are usually girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 17. Girls are trafficked and recruited for factory work, household help and prostitution.
Young children are increasingly becoming targets of child trafficking, exposing them to violence, sexual abuse and HIV infection.
In times of disasters, emergencies, and armed conflict, children become even more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, neglect, trafficking, and other forms of harm.
Key goals
To address these issues, Plan Philippines has set the following goals:
Education
- Identify children denied access to education.
- Design interventions to make education accessible.
- Link poor households to existing opportunities to improve their economic status.
Health
- Strengthen the capacity of children and their families to practice a healthy lifestyle.
- Enhance the performance of health delivery systems.
- Help families decide on preventive, curative and rehabilitative health care.
Protect
- Strengthen child protection mechanisms and structures.
- Build capacity of children, parents and communities.
- Build capacity of local government on disaster preparedness plans.
Governance
- Develop inclusive processes for local and school governance.
- Establish venues for children to express their views.
- Influence the formulation of public policies.
Our progress
Plan Philippines has made great strides in helping children, their families and their communities realise their rights.
Some of our most successful work includes:
- bringing women and child protection units closer to rural communities and encouraging the reporting of abuse.
- expanding coverage of early childhood care and development services among children aged 3 and above through supervised neighbourhood play groups.
- working with the Department of Health and various local government units to improve family planning practices, the prevention of acute respiratory infections, the control of diarrhoea among children aged 0-3, and increasing immunisation coverage for children and mothers.
- promoting backyard food growing and the use of low cost and safe farming techniques.
- creating vocational training opportunities for out-of-school children and youth.
