Plan has origins in the reading of an article on orphans of HIV/AIDS in Africa by Kay, the wife of Baptist pastor Rick Warren and a meeting in 2003 of the couple with a pastor of a township of Johannesburg in South Africa.
[1] The program was founded in the same year by the Saddleback Church and Warren to combat five development challenges.
[2][3] For 18 months, pilot programs were tested with twinning of villages with small church groups.
[5][6] In 2008, after listening to comments from church leaders in various countries on the effectiveness of the program, Rick Warren made several corrections to the program, including the addition of the church reconciliation component.
[11] In 2009, a study by the National University of Rwanda noted that the health component of the program, in Karongi District in Rwanda, had certain weaknesses, including the lack of cooperation between the churches of different names, lack of staff to manage outcome evaluation data, and reluctance to collaborate with secular groups (governments, NGOs, universities).