UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. 

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. 

And we never give up. 

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

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 start-up 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 applicant is to identify preference for one or two of the following portfolio areas the intern is most interested in:

Humanitarian Innovations Portfolio: In the context of more frequently occurring humanitarian crises coupled with diminishing financial resources, the vision of the humanitarian portfolio is to transform the landscape of emergency preparedness and response by identifying, adapting and scaling solutions to address the key challenges in the humanitarian space. This portfolio area focuses on how innovations can support increased reach and coverage to people affected by conflict, climate, and public health emergencies, while ensuring inclusive humanitarian action of vulnerable populations and the hardest-to-reach children. To do this, focus is made on procuring and implementing innovative solutions that relate to digitalizing feedback mechanisms to inform humanitarian programming, equal access to energy supply in conflict settings and better systems for early warnings. Ensuring that state-of-the-art technologies are deployed and utilized by humanitarians, and supporting solutions to ensure barriers faced by local level first responders to humanitarian crises are minimized.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Evidence, Learning and Research (MEELR) / Knowledge Management (KM): MEELR/KM at UNICEF is an essential function to assess if progress is made in achieving the expected results of programs and projects, identify bottlenecks in implementation and make necessary adjustments, promote accountability of results and support continuous learning and improvement. The MEELR function at the Office of Innovation works with innovation portfolios to generate high quality evidence and learnings to inform the pathway to scale. The Knowledge Management function aims at curating and sharing knowledge on innovation in a way that prompts action for delivering results for children by OOI and UNICEF colleagues.

Mental Health Innovation Portfolio: Mental health issues are a leading cause of mortality, disease, and disability for children, especially adolescents. One in four people experience a mental health condition in their lifetime.  And mental health conditions contribute to over 10% of the global burden of disease. Children around the world face a mental health crisis, but UNICEF is in the forefront to act, protect and care for the mental health of the next generation. That's why we've made it a global priority for 2021-2025. At OOI our focus is on systems-level change, by and with young people, for lasting impact. We take a multi-layered, inter-sectoral approach, recognizing the links between mental health and other areas like the arts (music, sports), tech, community-led support, education and healthcare. And therefore, we work to strengthen connections between different mental health interventions to ensure a holistic approach. We develop innovative solutions to scale up quality mental health care and reach more children in need.

UPSHIFT: is a social innovator accelerator for young people aged 10-24 which is built on best practices in non-formal education, experiential learning, and business education to cultivate essential skills and mindsets for personal, academic, and professional success. Operating in 47 countries, it has graduated 4.1 million young people. As the custodian of the programme, OOI oversees strategic vision and identification and development of delivery model which are primarily focused on UPSHIFT delivery through education systems and digital platforms for blended learning.

Please see attached detailed Terms of Reference (TOR)  TOR Innovations Intern -2024-02-07 final.pdf

Your main responsibilities will be:

The below responsibilities are examples of how/where the intern can support. Responsibilities will be agreed to in discussion with the Portfolio Manager once the intern is recruited.

• Research support: The candidate will assist with collating, reviewing, and presenting research findings for both internal and external publication. The candidate will provide primary and secondary research support through a variety of methods including interviews and scanning of solutions by market intelligence.
• Project Coordination support: The candidate will assist with keeping the Innovation Portfolios data updated for internal use and on INVENT, which is UNICEF's global digital repository for technology for development (T4D) and innovations.
• Knowledge management support: the candidate will assist with general organization of evidence and evaluations, that are both carried out by UNICEF and by external actors, to ensure an updated resource depository.
• Drafting of documents: The candidate will support with drafting of concept notes, landscape reviews of innovative solutions, presentations and slide decks, and other documents are needed. The selected intern will also be work with developing briefing notes and other relevant documents.
• Communications support: The candidate will support designing, conceptualizing communication assets for visibility and digital media amplification.
• Online community hosting: assist with facilitating communication and engagement, monitoring community activity, collecting, and sharing feedback. Including organizing events or activities and facilitating introductions between members.
• Project Evaluation support: The candidate will support in the development of a checklist for incoming portfolio projects, as well support the portfolio manager with employing the checklist to evaluate the absence/presence of features for consideration in early-stage and accelerated project.
• Event support: The candidate may support preparation for various events that may occur during the internship period.
• Information management and visualization: The candidate will support in the development of a system that will support M&E teams at the country office and regional level to collect data in real time, enable the storage, processing and analysing of M&E data, and visualizing key indicators to support evidence-based decision making. The data management and visualization pipeline shall include the development of a system for data capture, submission, cleaning and shaping, and an interactive dashboard. 

As a UNICEF Innovation Intern, you will:

• Get to work on a specific project of strategic value to the team. You’ll get to present your ideas and outputs to the team at the end of the internship.
• Gain hands-on experience working with a new team supporting the role out of innovative products at scale.
• Have a fun and inspiring internship experience to learn and discuss how innovative solutions can be applied in the humanitarian context.

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

• Be enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate or Ph.D. degree programme or have graduated within the past two years.
• Have good academic performance as demonstrated by recent university or institution records.
• Have excellent communication and writing skills.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency (written and verbal) in English. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:

• No travel is expected for the intern(s)

Conditions:

• Age: Interns must be at least 18 years
• Have good academic performance as demonstrated by recent university or institution records.
• Have no immediate relatives (e.g. father, mother, brother, sister) working in any UNICEF office.
• Have no other relatives in the line of authority which the intern will report to.
• Individuals must have proof of medical insurance covering the time and location of their internship.
• This internship can be delivered on a full-time or part-time commitment.
• Individuals are expected to provide their own laptop.
• Selected candidates will receive a monthly stipend (unless already in receipt of any support for the internship from a third party).
• Individuals must fund their own travel and living expenses.
• Individuals are responsible for arranging any visa or immigration requirements.

Employment: There is no expectancy of employment at the end of the internship.

How to apply:

• Interest applicant is required to submit an application via the online portal.
• Please clearly state the portfolio areas most interested to work with.

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.

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.

Contact: For any queries, please contact: swe-ooi-recruitments@unicef.org