For every child, innovate...

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.
 
UNICEF's Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach -- in a traditionally risk-averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children.

The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

How can you make a difference?

The UNICEF Innovation Fund has been specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify "clusters" or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology - so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. We find these solutions clustered around $100 billion industries in frontier technology spaces, such as: UAVs, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, nanosatellites, and human dynamics. With SD$35M (+ 2267 ETH + 8 BTC) raised to date, the Innovation Fund is scaling its investment portfolio with the aim of investing in 20 start-ups every year and provides funding to CO-led projects. The current portfolio of companies consists of several cohorts developing and piloting solutions in virtual and augmented reality, data science and artificial intelligence, blockchain, UAVs, IoT, and in assistive technology. 

The Office of Innovation currently hosts the Secretariat for the Digital Public Goods Alliance, established in follow-up to the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. In its report, the Panel recommends as 1B “that a broad, multi-stakeholder alliance, involving the UN, create a platform for sharing digital public goods, engaging talent and pooling data sets, in a manner that respects privacy, in areas related to attaining the SDGs”. Norway, Sierra Leone, UNDP, UNICEF, BMZ and iSPIRT, the six board organizations work to implement this recommendation.

As part of the Alliance’s work on identifying and vetting potential digital public goods, and identifying and engaging with implementation support communities, the initial alliance partners have developed a technical assessment process. This process is documented on https://digitalpublicgoods.net/nominate/

Your main responsibilities will be:

The Office of Innovation is co-leading the Alliance’s Secretariat in close collaboration with the second co-lead hosted by the Government of Norway. Co-Leads provide overall coordination of the Alliance’s activities and among various members to ensure an aligned approach to implementing the Alliance’s strategy. As part of the Secretariat team, you will, among others, oversee and coordinate the vetting process, lead and facilitate communities of practice.

• Provide overall coordination of the Secretariat team, in line with DPG Alliance Strategy
• Run Communities of Practice to highlight digital public goods that can meet particular high priority needs.
• Coordinate and lead the vetting process, ensuring the scaling of DPGs nominees, assessment.
• Coordinate partnerships engagement and recruitment of new DPGA Member organizations
• Ensure the DPG Standard has evolved, based on expert community input, to appropriately address open standards and artificial intelligence.

Description of assignment

Collect feedback on the technical assessment process and deliver a report providing inputs for revisions of the assessment criteria.

Please access the full ToR here:  TOR - DPG Secretariat Co-Lead.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (master’s or higher) in business administration, public
• administration, communication, design or another relevant field.
• *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 10 years of professional experience
• may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of eight years of relevant professional experience in project management,
• stakeholder/network/community management and engagement or communication
• Demonstrated experience with communication tools and channels for distributed projects.
• Experience in virtual community management and participation
• Experience in working with and coordinating diverse groups of stakeholders at senior levels and
• across sectors
• Experience in partnership development and management ideally within and across the UN system
• Knowledge of open licensing desired
• Knowledge of technology for development or experience working in a relevant work or
• volunteer experience related to open-source initiatives will be considered an advantage.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English required. Knowledge of another official
• UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset. An advanced university degree in computer science, community management or in other relevant areas. *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 3 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.

Travel

• Consultant will need to travel internationally two times during this contract:
  • Members Meeting in Oslo, Norway November 2023 – Requires 4 days of physical attendance.
•  The consultant is responsible to arrange his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.

Payment details and further considerations

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.
• Interested applicant is requested to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.

How to apply:

• Interest applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.
• Financial proposal must include travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance.
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.