DE LA INDUSTRIA CREATIVA Y CULTURAL DEL TEATRO EN BOGOTA

Plan Australia, based in Melbourne, is the largely autonomous Australian National Office (ANO) of Plan, which is one of the oldest and largest child-centred community development non-government organisations (NGOs) in the world. Plan is the parent organisation of a ‘family’ of offices which operate in more than 60 countries. The organisation has its headquarters in the United Kingdom and has a child-centred development mission with a goal of ending child poverty. The separate offices of Plan in the countries it operates have a high degree of autonomy and all have responsibility for

‘fundraising, building relationships, development programs, advocacy, public education and young people’s participation’ (Plan, 2010). However, the balance of time and resources committed to these various responsibilities differs according to the location of the country office. The 18 offices that are located in developed countries are designated as donor countries and carry the major responsibility

47

for raising funds. The 49 offices in developing countries carry the major responsibility for implementing development programs that benefit children (Plan, 2010).

The Australian National Office is one of the 18 ‘donor’ country offices. On its website, Plan³¹

describes itself as an organisation ‘free from political and religious agenda, existing only for the sake of children’ and which works ‘to empower communities to overcome poverty, so that children have the opportunity to reach their full potential’ (Plan, 2010).

Further to this, Plan believes that children must be involved throughout any development activity that involves them if the activity is to be genuinely constructed in their best interests. An implication of this approach is that Plan believes that children should be considered as equal partners in efforts to change their futures. In this view, children are citizens in their own right rather than citizens in the making and as such they are considered to be active agents of change in community development efforts rather than passive recipients of such efforts (Plan, 2010). Alongside this view of children within particular development contexts, Plan believes that in a more general sense it is necessary to be working both locally and globally on the underlying causes of poverty in the developing world in order to make real improvements to children’s lives.

Plan’s philosophy and intent with regard to development are expressed in their mission statement:

Plan strives 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 by:

 Enabling deprived children, their families and their communities to meet their basic needs and to increase their ability to participate in and benefit from their societies.

 Fostering relationships to increase understanding and unity among peoples of different cultures and countries.

 Promoting the rights and interests of the world's children. (Plan, 2010) When Global Connections was developed it was grounded in these core principles and the ways of working such principles engender. From the outset, the young people in each group were to be encouraged to recognise their counterparts as peers. The objectives, as articulated by Plan, of Global Connections with regard to the young people participating in it were stated as follows:

31 From this point, the use of the name ‘Plan’ within this thesis can be understood to mean ‘Plan Australia’. When there is a need to make reference to offices other than the ANO they will be identified separately for example, Plan Indonesia.

48

 Form personal bonds and a sense of global connection with their peers overseas by mutually sharing experiences, stories, pictures, dreams, ideas, films, concerns and priorities with each other

 Increase understanding of issues facing young people in a different community overseas

 Develop invaluable skills, such as leadership, expression and communication (especially visual literacy), project planning and implementation.

 Raise awareness about the lives and experiences and issues of young people from around the world, and in their own community

 Develop common agenda, joint solutions and collaborations for issues of concern with young

people overseas (Wierenga et al., 2008)

Irrespective of being grounded in core beliefs about their activity, Global Connections’ design meant that it operated in ways that were transformative with regard to Plan's normal activity. This was not an incidental outcome. Plan actively intended for the program to be transformative for their

organisation, and included themselves within the objectives of the program: ‘Global Connections should enable Plan to learn more about young people’s ideas, visions and needs and integrate them into the processes, operations and philosophy of Plan’s work, and to also build the capacity of Plan to actively engage and listen to young people’ (Wierenga et al., 2008, p.17).

3.2.1 Global Connections within Plan Australia

As well as impacting in planned ways concerning the way Plan related to young people, Global Connections was also transformative with regard to Plan’s normal activity because:

 It involved undertaking a ‘program’ in Australia. As a ‘donor’ country, activity in Australia was traditionally mainly fundraising and marketing. Plan’s involvement with development programs was with the design and management of programs which were implemented overseas in developing countries. This raised fundamental questions about how the organisation engages with the Australian community.

 It involved working collaboratively with Plan Indonesia in ways that went beyond the normal requirements of that relationship. Although Plan Australia developed the program and was the driver behind Global Connections, its implementation required ongoing collaboration with, and the active involvement of Plan Indonesia. Plan Australia did not have direct access to the groups of young people in Indonesia which were connected to the young people in Australian schools. Nor did Plan Australia have the operational capability to implement the program in Indonesia. As a result, Plan Indonesia was a critical partner at both a planning

49

level and also in a practical capacity because they needed to commit operational resources and time to enable the program to operate.

 Designing and managing an educational program in Australia required development of skills and relationships beyond those required for the normal activity of the Australian office.

 It was themed around global citizenship and global citizenship education and this

represented a new emphasis for Plan. This raised practical questions for Plan such as ‘Why and How should Plan be engaged with global citizenship?’, but it also raised the philosophical question of ‘What do we mean by global citizenship?

 It involved working as a non-government organisation within the government structures and systems of schools.

 It connected groups of young people in two countries and Plan needed to monitor and balance the outcomes of those groups of young people who were very differently

motivated³²within each individual version of the program. This raised questions about ‘How does the program incorporate the various aims and intents of the different groups of young people?’ In their rhetoric, Plan considered all the groups of young people to be equally important – but ‘How could ‘equality’ be realised in practice?’

Global Connections was not a mature product of an experienced education division of Plan. It was very much a work in progress. Albeit grounded very strongly in Plan’s core principles of child-centred development, the program was open ended as to its day to day running and eventual outcomes. The program operated from the outset in a way that was similar to a program that was run in a

developing country. However, it was not recognised as such within the organisation and did not initially have the formal status of being a ‘program’. Plan did not run ‘programs’ in Australia³³. The transformative effect of the situation described with regard to Plan’s usual practice meant that the managing and funding of Global Connections required internal adjustment within Plan. In effect, Global Connections provided a ’meta lens’ through which Plan Australia could view their core activity.

Concurrent, with the beginning phase of Global Connections, Plan was attempting to integrate Child-Centred Community Development (CCCD) across their various divisions. As part of this process, a

32 In every implementation of the program there was a group of young people in each country facilitating the program and a group of young(er) people engaged in the program – four groups in all. The motivations of the facilitators were very different to the participants in the program and in the context of each country. Plan considered all four groups of young people and their outcomes to be equally important.

33 At the time of writing, new funding initiatives from the Commonwealth government aimed at community engagement seem to offer NGOs like Plan additional possibilities for running this type of program in Australia and Plan has responded by restructuring and repositioning the program.

50

Youth Participation Coordinator was appointed in 2004 and was made responsible for Global Connections. The program was the primary function of the role of Youth Participation Coordinator although it was envisaged that, because youth participation was a cross-cutting issue, the

Coordinator could potentially advise across all other programs. Global Connections and youth participation generally came within the Global Learning Unit which was situated in the International Programs Department. However, Global Connections was not an international program in the usual sense which referred to development programs overseas. As a result, Global Connections struggled to get recognition within the Plan as a genuine program (Plan Coordinator, 2008).

Despite not immediately gaining recognition as a ‘legitimate’ program, Global Connections was supported beyond the 2005 pilot phase. The program ran again (without being scaled up) in 2006 and 2007 while still struggling to find a place within the organisation’s normal operations³⁴. That there were five different Directors of the CCCD Department from its inception in 2005 until 2008, added to the difficulty of establishing stability for the program. There were also several different Youth Participation Coordinators directly responsible for administering Global Connections. Only one person involved in the pilot phase in 2005 was still actively connected to running the program in 2009.

In 2007, Plan committed to the ARC project and also identified that Youth Participation was an area that Plan could consider as a ‘thought leadership’ issue. This meant that Plan’s identity as an organisation would be more strongly aligned with Youth Participation and that Plan would actively seek to take a leading role on the issue. The outcome of the changes at this time resulted in a shift in the way Global Connections was seen within the organisation. By the end of 2008, the program was seen as a ‘real’ program and deserving of systems and programmatic support in the same way as other projects.

Involvement with Global Connections had implications for Plan that extended beyond the program outcomes. Fundamental questions were raised for Plan relating to the purposes, roles and methods of their development activity. Firstly, were ways of thinking about the role that children themselves play in development activity associated with the programs that Plan sponsors. Secondly, were ways of thinking about their relationship with their Australian constituency and their role within the Australian community. The next sections of this chapter consider how each of these dimensions is reflected in the literature related to development activity. Together these sections frame the

philosophical and practical perspectives that Plan as a non-formal education provider brought to the partnerships with the schools.

34 Funding of the project for example required finding specific corporate sponsors because it lacked the status of a program and could not access funds raised for development activity.

51