Plan China’s new country director is Mark Leighton, who has joined Plan China from Plan International Headquarters in England where he has been working for the past four years as a member of Plan’s international programme department and also as a member of Plan’s global sponsorship, grants and business development department. Mark’s work from IH in recent years has seen him involved in a range of evaluation and support visits to over 30 different country programmes and national organizations across the Americas, Europe, West and East Africa as well as to South and South East Asia. Previously Mark has also worked for Plan for over five years in South America and he started his Plan career with the UK national organization. 

Mark is from London, UK, where he completed his MSc in Development Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2002). Mark’s wife, Wen Li, is from North East China and they have two daughters, Amy aged 11 and Jenny aged 8. Both children are key dancers and in addition to ballet and Latin American dancing they also studied street dance and Chinese traditional dance before coming to China. Mark, however, dances very badly!! 

Mark’s professional career background is in UK provincial government – education, social welfare, criminal justice systems, probation service, youth employment and births, marriages and deaths bureau. He has also worked for INGOs for 3 years in Bangladesh and for the UK government Charity Commission which regulates the work of the UKNO NGO sector. Mark speaks fluent Spanish as well as English and is trying to improve his Chinese language skills.  

In his spare time Mark has many interests if he can escape from work emails, including loud guitar music. On China and Plan China Mark said ‘Now is an exciting time for China, and for China’s place in world history. Outside China the news is full of stories – and statistics – about the successes of China’s economic growth. But the other story, about the challenges within China of the economic transition – is less well known and less well understood. With the emergence of a newly active civil society and a dynamic media and inquisitive and socially minded younger generation – seen both during the terrible May 12^th earthquake and recently during the Olympics – Plan has many opportunities to support and promote the needs and rights of the more disadvantaged children in China. For Plan China going forwards we can look to strengthen our own priority setting, internal communication and decision making processes so that we can be as efficient, effective and accountable as possible in the work that we do. Advancing child participation and empowerment should be a priority for us and I now look forward to learning more from China and from my Plan China colleagues and helping to lead a harmonious Plan China forwards”