UNICEF
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 startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.
We Do This By
UNICEF’s Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world’s children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs.
- 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.
Our team
UNICEF’s global innovation portfolios focus our efforts on programme-led, problem driven innovations that have potential to scale and accelerate results for children. The innovation portfolio management approach aligns technical and financial resources to promising projects from across the organisation that can accelerate results for children. Each portfolio is designed around specific programmatic challenges that UNICEF is trying to solve at scale.
A UNICEF innovation portfolio contains solutions that use new approaches, tools and technology to address key problems UNICEF is trying to solve for and with children and young people. Solutions within the innovation portfolios are selected based on their potential to accelerate results for children across multiple countries and regions .
How can you make a difference?
The UNICEF Internship Programme offers the opportunity to acquire direct practical experience in UNICEF’s Innovation Office. We are looking for you who can distil multiple forms of knowledge— from discussions, research papers, data — into actionable insights & templates. Strategic design mindset is a bonus: listening, learning, observing to enable sketching, and synthesis.
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.
- Be part of a dedicated induction programme to UNICEF and UNICEF Innovation
- Have a fun and inspiring internship experience
Main Responsibilities Will Be
To help discover and develop a body of knowledge around inventive approaches to mental health & psychosocial wellbeing innovation that supports a new way of working. Under the overall guidance of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing (MHPSW) Portfolio Manager, the purpose of this role is to collaboratively tap into the tacit, uncaptured knowledge of our ecosystem of solutions implementers, collaborators and partners, then distill this knowledge into simplified tools and custom templates thereby improving the body of knowledge around inventive approaches to mental health & psychosocial wellbeing in UNICEF. This would inform portfolio direction for the future, be shareable externally and position UNICEF as a leader in this space. It would also feed into the mental health innovation toolbox.
- Design research including planning and conducting design research, research synthesis, ideation and conceptualization.
- Gather experiences and draw out lessons learned from multiple country and regional experiences of setting up and running the first ever set of UNICEF Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing portfolio solutions.
- Carry out goal-directed qualitative interviews with key project stakeholders. Prepare a set of guiding questions for in-depth online interviews and electronic questionnaires. Conduct and record interviews and collate completed questionnaires
- Sketching – distill concepts and organize them into diagrams such as mind maps, concept maps or flow charts.
- List examples of local MHPSW innovation happening in the countries where UNICEF is present.
- Consolidate insights on specific questions from assorted studies and sources
- Prepare findings into a set of PowerPoint presentations
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
- Enormous consideration will be given for past work at design agencies, with design teams, or on design projects and demonstrable experience in visual communication and system thinking, human centered design theory, experimental approach to innovation, sense making. Strong grasp of remote interactive working tools like Miro, Mural amongst others is desired.
- Be enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate or Ph.D. degree programme in any multidisciplinary field of study including innovation management, design, social sciences, or other related and relevant field, or have graduated within the past two years.
- A creative and rigorous thinker, organized and thorough. You synthesize diverse streams of information and strive for clear, persuasive communication with strong attention to detail.
- Have experience working with different cultures
- Applicants must be at least 18 years old
- Have no immediate relatives (e.g., father, mother, brother, sister) working in any UNICEF office.
Conditions
- Individuals must have proof of medical insurance covering the time and location of their internship.
- This internship expects a full-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.
- UNICEF will not be responsible for costs arising from accidents and/or illness incurred during the intern’s service, whether on or off UNICEF premises. Employment: There is no expectancy of employment at the end of the internship.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA). To view our competency framework, please visit here.
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
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. The candidate may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid).
To apply for this job please visit secure.dc7.pageuppeople.com.