Her future, her decision.
The programme seeks to eliminate child, early, and forced marriage and unions by simultaneously empowering girls, transforming community norms, and strengthening laws and services so that girls can learn, lead, decide, and thrive free from child marriage and its consequences.
© Plan International
One cause never explains it, so one fix never ends it.
The CEFM flagship outlines Plan International’s global approach to addressing Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU), a practice rooted in gender inequality, poverty, harmful social norms, limited educational opportunities, adolescent pregnancy, and weak legal protections for girls. These challenges are often exacerbated by conflict, displacement, climate shocks, and economic crises, which increase families’ vulnerability and can make child marriage a perceived coping strategy.
To address these drivers, Plan places girls and young women at the centre of its programming by strengthening their agency, confidence, and opportunities. Key interventions include supporting girls’ education, leadership development, life skills, economic empowerment, vocational training, and access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. The aim is to provide girls with viable alternatives to marriage and equip them with the knowledge and resources needed to make informed decisions about their futures.
Recognising that child marriage is sustained by broader social expectations, Plan also works to transform attitudes and behaviours within families and communities. This includes engaging parents, caregivers, boys, men, religious leaders, and community influencers to challenge harmful gender norms and champion girls’ rights. Through community dialogue, social behaviour change campaigns, youth advocacy, and economic support mechanisms, Plan seeks to build environments where girls are valued, supported, and able to remain in school and pursue their aspirations.
At the systems level, Plan advocates for stronger laws, policies, and public services that protect girls and uphold their rights. This includes strengthening child protection systems, adolescent-friendly health services, education systems, social protection programmes, and legal frameworks that prohibit marriage before age 18 without exceptions. The expected outcome is lasting systemic change: fewer girls entering child marriage, increased educational attainment and economic opportunities, reduced adolescent pregnancy, stronger protection from violence, and greater gender equality, enabling girls to learn, lead, decide, and thrive throughout their lives.
Girls’ own accounts of child marriage.
Conversations with 251 girls and young women, married now or before, in Plan International’s 2025 report. Not results of this programme.
reported that they had no say in their decision to marry.
Source: Plan International, The State of the World’s Girls 2025: Let me be a child, not a wife, p5.
dropped out of school directly following, or due to, their marriage.
Source: Plan International, The State of the World’s Girls 2025: Let me be a child, not a wife, p5.
reported having no say in household decision-making.
Source: Plan International, The State of the World’s Girls 2025: Let me be a child, not a wife, p5.
were married to a man five or more years older than they were, some to men more than 10 or 20 years older.
Source: Plan International, The State of the World’s Girls 2025: Let me be a child, not a wife, p5.
Plan’s report says the percentages should not be seen as representative, because the sample is qualitative and not statistically generalisable (p4).
| What is compared | GirlsGirls deciding their own futures | Families and communitiesFamilies and communities rejecting the norms behind it | Laws and servicesLaws, policies and services that protect girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it works with | Girls aged 10 to 17, whether at risk or already married, and young women up to 24 who are or have been married. | Parents, caregivers, boys, men, religious leaders, and community influencers. | Government officials and service providers. |
| What Plan does | Supporting girls’ education, leadership development, life skills, economic empowerment, vocational training, and access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. | Community dialogue, social behaviour change campaigns, youth advocacy, and economic support mechanisms. | Strengthening child protection systems, adolescent-friendly health services, education systems, social protection programmes, and legal frameworks that prohibit marriage before age 18 without exceptions. |
| What changes | Girls deciding for themselves. The knowledge, skills and assets to choose school, training, work or leadership over early marriage. Married girls back in learning. Girls who are already married return to education, with childcare where they need it, while communities work to end the stigma faced by girls who leave a marriage. | Families who choose to wait. Families and communities who prefer that their daughters do not marry before 18, and who have the resources to delay it. | Laws that reach girls. Laws, policies and services that offer real alternatives to marriage, and are funded and enforced well enough to reach the girls they are for. |
| Share of the Zambia costing | 25%: girls’ agency, leadership and economic pathways. | 35%: families, communities and norm change. | 15%: systems, policy and services. |
Girls
Girls deciding their own futures
- Who it works with
- Girls aged 10 to 17, whether at risk or already married, and young women up to 24 who are or have been married.
- What Plan does
- Supporting girls’ education, leadership development, life skills, economic empowerment, vocational training, and access to sexual and reproductive health information and services.
- What changes
- Girls deciding for themselves. The knowledge, skills and assets to choose school, training, work or leadership over early marriage. Married girls back in learning. Girls who are already married return to education, with childcare where they need it, while communities work to end the stigma faced by girls who leave a marriage.
- Share of the Zambia costing
- 25%: girls’ agency, leadership and economic pathways.
Families and communities
Families and communities rejecting the norms behind it
- Who it works with
- Parents, caregivers, boys, men, religious leaders, and community influencers.
- What Plan does
- Community dialogue, social behaviour change campaigns, youth advocacy, and economic support mechanisms.
- What changes
- Families who choose to wait. Families and communities who prefer that their daughters do not marry before 18, and who have the resources to delay it.
- Share of the Zambia costing
- 35%: families, communities and norm change.
Laws and services
Laws, policies and services that protect girls
- Who it works with
- Government officials and service providers.
- What Plan does
- Strengthening child protection systems, adolescent-friendly health services, education systems, social protection programmes, and legal frameworks that prohibit marriage before age 18 without exceptions.
- What changes
- Laws that reach girls. Laws, policies and services that offer real alternatives to marriage, and are funded and enforced well enough to reach the girls they are for.
- Share of the Zambia costing
- 15%: systems, policy and services.
Sources. Who it works with: girls and young women, Plan International, Global CEFMU Programme Model (November 2025), p19; families and communities, Global Girls Foundation, supplied 30 September 2026; laws and services, the model, p56. What Plan does: Global Girls Foundation, supplied 30 September 2026. What changes: the model, pp21, 24 and 28. Share of the Zambia costing: the model’s indicative €750,000 example for Zambia, Annex I, pp55–56; the other 25% is delivery, set out under What it costs.
Whether she marries, when, and to whom is her decision to make.
What the record shows, and what it does not yet.
Plan International works on child marriage through 25 country offices in every region, among them countries with the highest rates of child marriage (Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Nepal) and with the highest numbers (India, China, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico). Gifts through the Foundation fund part of that work, not all of it. Source: Plan International, Global CEFMU Programme Model (November 2025), p16.
The model is the evolution of more than a decade of Plan International’s programming and influencing on child marriage. Source: Global CEFMU Programme Model (November 2025), p15: “an evolution of over a decade of Plan’s programming and influencing experience”.
Not yet measured
The programme model sets out Plan International’s approach and a costed example. It reports no measured results of its own.
Plan International’s programme model in full (PDF, 62 pages, 3.2 MB)
Investing in a girl’s right to decide.
Plan International’s own example: one country, twelve months, costed in full.
Indicative · Zambia · twelve months
Where the €750,000 would go
The figures below are Plan International’s worked example for Zambia, costed to show what a full project under this model involves. The proposal you receive is shaped to the programme your gift will fund.
They are an estimate, not a quote, and not audited spend. Source: Plan International, Global CEFMU Programme Model (November 2025), Annex I, pp55–56.
- Families, communities and norm change35%
- Girls’ agency, leadership and economic pathways25%
- Delivery: monitoring, evaluation and learning 10%; project management 10%; Plan International’s Centre of Excellence 5%25%
- Systems, policy and services15%
- Investment
- €750,000 for a twelve-month project in one country.
Indicative. Plan International’s example concept note for Zambia, which states that actual costs vary with scale, delivery, geographic coverage and donor requirements. Source: Global CEFMU Programme Model (November 2025), Annex I, p55.
- Reach
- 60,750 girls, caregivers, leaders and public officials, directly.
Same source, p55, restated as the total on p56.