Vocational training

Ensuring the future of children means making sure that their rights to survival and development are respected in every sense.

Plan's programmes assisting children affected by AIDS, helps support their social safety net and the aim to work with community-based organisations in the support vocational training of adolescents girls and boys, including young mothers.

Guinea

In Guinea for example, Plan entered into a partnership with a local association to assist children who had dropped out of school because they were orphaned, lacked parental supervision or lived in extreme poverty. Initially, 106 boys and 94 girls entered the programme; 150 of them enrolled in primary school and 50 in vocational training. After one year, only two children had dropped out of the programme, and one had died.

The programme pays the school fees, uniforms and supplies, and it provides tools for the apprentices. But it soon became clear that children entering the programme suffer multiple deprivations. Many are sick or chronically under-nourished. If they have families, the entire family is often on the brink of starvation. Plan has therefore negotiated additional assistance for nutritional and medical support with other international agencies to assist the children's families and guardians.