Plan International Responds to Indonesia Tsunami
After a tsunami struck beaches around the Sunda Strait in Indonesia on 23 December, killing at least 160 people, Plan International in Indonesia is preparing to deploy an assessment team to survey the situation in preparation for an aid response. The Indonesian Government’s Meteorological and Disaster Management Agency said at least 160 people have been killed on the Indonesian […]
Children Love to Play
Children love to play! And if this week is anything to go by, so do my adult colleagues! This week in Niamey, Niger, a group of programme staff from the Lake Chad countries (Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon) participated in a training on developing child-friendly feedback mechanisms, part of our organisational commitment to improving accountability to […]
Education in Emergencies
Team work makes the dream work Anne Marie McCarthy, Plan International Ireland’s Emergencies’ Programme Manager reports live from Dakar, Senegal. 18 years have passed since the Education for All (EFA) conference in Dakar. The Dakar Framework, agreed in April 2000, committed that all children would receive primary education by 2015. I was living in Dakar at the […]
What We Know About the Earthquake and Tsunami in Idonensia
On Friday September 28th, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Waves of up to 6 metres hammered the coastline, and more than 170 aftershocks with magnitudes of up to 6 continue to strike the island. Tragically, 832 people are confirmed dead and 540 are injured. Many people remain trapped beneath […]
Perspective
My work gives me perspective. I meet a lot of people on my travels and together we share stories and opinions and laugh often. Anne Marie McCarthy, Plan International Ireland’s Emergencies’ Programme Manager reports live from Cameroon, Central Africa. Today I visited Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon, Central Africa. The camp is currently home to over 60,000 […]
Amazing Acts of Courage and Determination
Emilia Sorrentino an Education in Emergencies Specialist with Plan International, has been a humanitarian for more than ten years. She spent four years in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Gaza and West Bank) where she worked as Programme Manager and later as Country Director for an Italian NGO. During her career she has responded to crisis […]
Numbers Can Only Tell Us So Much
Anne Marie McCarthy, Plan International Ireland’s Emergencies’ Coordinator reports live from Dakar. ‘Nit nitay garabam’, a Wolof proverb that says that people are the medicine of people. For Senegalese people, this highlights the importance of community and relationships, and the need to have empathy for others. For Plan International, as we move towards our goal of improving […]
Cameroon, Camp Minawo – Each of the 60,000 people in this camp left their homes behind.
Anne Marie McCarthy, Plan International Ireland’s Emergencies’ Coordinator reports live from Cameroon. The first thing that hits you when you get off the plane in the late afternoon sunshine is the heat, and along with it, the anticipation of that moment when the air turns cooler as the sun goes down, the heure bleu, or blue hour, […]
Lake Chad Crisis – Maiduguri
Anne Marie McCarthy, Plan International Ireland’s Emergencies’ Coordinator reports live from Nigeria. In the early 80’s a one hit wonder called Charlene sings about “seeing some things a woman isn’t supposed to see”. The burgeoning feminist in me pondered, more than was technically necessary, about a throw away lyric in a song, but for the life of […]
Lake Chad – Boko Haram
Linda Furnham, Plan International Ireland’s Programme Support Officer (Emergencies) reports live from West Africa. Well, some of you may remember better than others, but when I was a girl, I worried about a handful of rather superficial things. Would I make new friends in secondary school? Would I make the football team at school like […]
