About us
The world is failing girls. We won’t. Learn more about us and how we’re powering change for girls – and those around them.
The world is failing girls. We won’t. Learn more about us and how we’re powering change for girls – and those around them.
Plan International is a global children’s charity advancing equality for girls and a just world for all.
Because here’s the truth: around the world, girls still face more risks and fewer choices – and their hard‑won freedoms are increasingly under threat.
But girls aren’t backing down and neither are we. Together the plan is still on, until every girl is safe, in school, and can choose her own future. Until we are all equal.
Will you stand with us?
Learn more about us
How we work
Girls aren’t backing down. Every single day, they’re organising, leading and demanding the futures they deserve – staying in school, protecting their health, driving change in their communities and speaking out under extreme pressure.
Plan International stands fiercely beside them in over 80 countries, even when disaster strikes.
Because when we make the world a better place to be a girl, we make it better for everyone.
From pop-up spaces that keep young people in conflict learning, to after-school clubs that help to end child marriage, we’re creating lasting change for girls together – supporting every part of their world, not just one piece of it.
As well as long-term development programmes and responding to emergencies, we campaign with and for young people on the issues that matter to them – backing girls to lead change in their own lives and communities.
Our deep community roots, strong partnerships and more than 85 years of trust from people like you make this possible.
We focus on girls because they often face the greatest disadvantage because of their age and gender. But our work reaches way beyond – benefitting boys, families and communities.
And we won’t stop now. Plan International UK is a proud member of a global organisation that stands with girls, until we are all equal.
Our strategy
We have a big ambition. To see all girls standing strong creating global change.
That means education for every girl, everywhere. It means a life free from violence. And it means girls in control of their bodies, their lives and their futures.
We want to create real change for girls. To shift power to those leading it. To support where we’re most needed. Our 2024 – 2027 strategy is all about creating these ripples of change and ensuring ensuring we remain agile, innovative and accountable. Read our full strategy to learn more.
Our commitment to all children
Plan International UK is committed to ensuring that all children and young people, whatever their identity or circumstances, can access their rights.
This includes the rights of trans children and young people. We are therefore committed to being trans inclusive in our work, and as an employer.
Our history
Plan International was founded in 1937 by British journalist and broadcaster John Langdon-Davies to support children orphaned during the Spanish Civil War.
He wanted to provide not only food, shelter and education to the children but also a sense that someone, somewhere, was thinking about them as an individual. This was the beginning of child sponsorship that is still at the core of our work.
Over the decades, we have extended our work to other parts of the world, from Asia and the Pacific to Africa and the Americas. But our focus remains the same – supporting every child to reach their full potential.
Change takes courage: Latifah's story
Latifah lives in Kenya, in one of Nairobi’s oldest and most densely populated informal settlements. Girls growing up here face poverty, violence and exclusion – realities that shape their lives long before they have a say in them.
Latifah is working to change that. Though Plan International's She Leads project, she helped create safe spaces where girls could come together, talk openly and learn about their rights – over their bodies, their decisions, and their futures.
“We started having sessions with the girls and young women, now they had a voice,” explains Latifah. “Even in their own homes, they would address issues they felt were not right. We feel like, for the longest time, we haven’t had a voice in this community.”
But change didn’t stop there. Latifah now continues the work through her own community organisation:
“She Leads gave us the platform. But now I go to meetings as a co-founder of my own organisation.”
Latifah’s leadership hasn’t come without risk. She’s faced pushback – event threats – from those who see girls’ growing confidence as a challenge to long-standing norms.
“It was as if we were the problem because we were enlightening these girls,” she says.
But Latifah refuses to back down. Because the plan is still on until we are all equal.
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