Plan is a child-centred development organization. With our vision of building a world in which all children realize their potential, Plan aims to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of life of deprived children in developing countries through a process that unites people across cultures and adds meaning and value to their lives.

Plan believes that while children are the tomorrow of the world, they are among the most vulnerable; and that children have the right of survival, development and living in an environment of dignity and respect.  Therefore, Plan program methodology termed: Child-Centred Community Development (CCCD) which is closely related with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) adopted the United Nations is how we go about making this a reality.

Though great achievement has been made in recent years, the world, including China, still has a long way to go in child’s survival, protection and development, because in 2006, globally :

·    The  annual deaths of children under age five is still 9.7 million.  

·    More than 1.5 million children each year die from diarrhea. In addition, hundreds of millions of children suffer from reduced physical growth and impaired cognitive functions due to intestinal worms. 

·    143 million under-fives continue to suffer from malnutrition.  

·    125 million children under five can not get access to safe drinking water, leaving them vulnerable to life-threatening diseases.

·    Around 51 million children born in 2006 have not had their births registered. 

·    The number of primary-school-age children who are not in school is still 93 million, and more than half of them are girls.  

·    158 million children is involved in child labor(Source: UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/whatwedo/index.html. Jan 22. 2008)  

At the same time, in China in 2006, 

·   About 45% of the children can not receive preschool education. Statistics from the Ministry of Education.   

·    45% of the families do not have sanitary toilets. (Public Report By the Ministry of Health, 2007.)  

·    About 24% of the population do not have safe drinking water (Statistics of the Ministry of Water Conservancy,2007) 

·    21.48 million children are living in families under the poverty line of  1 dollar per day. (Calculated from statistics in China Development Report,2007,  and  a speech by Shu guoxia of the PAO of the State council in March, 2007)