UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture., coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to 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. 

Our team

We're an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

• Looking at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children;
• Investing in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 02 year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries;
• Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.”

How can you make a difference?

OOI is looking for a Project Specialist Consultant (Communications and Reporting) that will assist in scaling humanitarian innovation initiatives, including Kits that Fit, and spreading awareness of the 5D Innovation Framework and Innovation MEL toolbox.

The consultant will work closely with the project manager and the rest of the team to coordinate the project, assist with communications to partners, produce inspiring communication materials such as articles and social media content to communicate the OOI solutions development and implementation across UNICEF teams, project partners, stakeholders and other interested parties.

You will possess excellent coordination and people skills, strong communication and writing skills and the experience to in an inspiring and engaging way communicate on the progress of Kits that Fit to different target groups. 

Kits that Fit is a UNICEF Initiative that aims to tailor kits for people’s needs in emergencies, supply them as locally as possible and continuously review them to be fit for purpose. It includes collecting feedback by end-users who receive the kits, and acting upon that feedback to ensure UNICEF kits fit the need of the intended people.

The Insights Teams solutions, the 5D Innovation Framework helps identify, validate and scale innovations through five dimensions - innovation, business model, impact, scalability and risk - and the Innovation MEL Toolbox, is a practical compendium of resources for evidence generation, that address the gap currently existing for measuring the non-linear path of innovation. Together, they offer an approach to gather actionable, fit-for-purpose data that helps innovators generate the right evidence at the right time, supporting smarter decisions by offering tailored tools to track progress, improve solutions, and ensure only the most impactful innovations move forward.  

Key outputs include:

1. Project Coordination: Coordinating project efforts with internal and external partners, including country offices. Coordinating communication efforts, assisting with quality control of deliverables from project partners and assisting project manager with simpler project management tasks.
   
   
2. Communication: Coordinating and producing high quality communications material for the publicity of Kits that Fit and the Insights Teams tools and its progress, and UNICEFs work, creating buy-in from project partners, stakeholders and future funders.
   
   
3. Reporting: Assist project manager with reporting outputs of the project, including both internal reporting to relevant stakeholders, and external reporting such as donor reports.

Your main responsibilities will be:

For Kits that Fit, the 5D Innovation Framework and Innovation MEL toolbox to be implemented successfully, buy-in from the projects many different partners and stakeholder is crucial, where project coordination efforts will be vital for smooth implementation alongside engaging communications materials that will need to be frequently developed and published across several of UNICEFs channels and events.

The consultant will be a core part of the team and the scope of work will focus on three main areas: project coordination, communications and reporting, working closely with together with the innovation managers. 

Project Coordination

• Assist project manager with organizing regular meetings of the project team and writing regular project updates.
• Establish and maintain good working relationships with the project team and project partners, including external partners.
• Engage with key internal and external project stakeholders.

Communication 

• Develop a comms plan for Kits that Fit scale-up phase. The consultant will research, write, edit and produce high-quality written content including advocacy and key messages, human interest stories, website articles, fact sheets, and source multimedia content i.e photos and videos for events and other awareness-raising activities for communication and advocacy.  
• Develop an updated communication plan for the 5D Innovation Framework and the Innovation MEL Toolbox. 
• Ensure accuracy, consistency, and clarity on the materials, including fact-checking proofreading and following review and approval guidelines.  

Reporting

• Support the project manager with narrative reporting to the donors per requests from country office management and global project team requests. 
• Participating in regular meetings of the project team as required by the project manager. 
• Coordinate reporting efforts with COs and when relevant other stakeholders such as consultants.

The consultant will report to the Humanitarian Portfolio Manager and the Insights Team Lead, at the Office of Innovation, UNICEF.  

If you would like to know more about the job, please access the full ToR here:  ToR Project Specialist Consultant 20251003.pdf

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

• An advanced university degree (master’s or higher) in communications, human rights, development studies, project management or other relevant field.
  • A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 2 years of relevant experience working with humanitarian innovation, M&E, communications and reporting to different target groups such as donors, partners, and internal audiences.
• Experience of working with communications for monitoring and evaluation as well as for humanitarian-related initiatives is a requirement. Experience of working with innovation is considered an asset.
• Knowledge of social and environmental sustainability for children and youths, particularly in fragile and conflict affected regions, is beneficial.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills for effectively building and maintaining positive teamwork.
• Excellent ability to work independently and deliver results on tight deadlines, including coordinating agreed upon communication strategic plan.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:

• The consultant is not expected to travel.
• In case of travel, the consultant is responsible for arranging 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. 

How to apply:

• Interest applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.  Please see the financial proposal template.  Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) 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.

General Terms and Conditions:

Please review UNICEF's General Terms and Conditions for Consultants here for important information regarding contract obligations, including medical insurance, SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccination, and income tax requirements.

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.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.