Communications Consultant, Office of Innovation, Helsinki, Finland, 6 months (REMOTE)

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

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.

Our team

Within the Office of Innovation, the newly established Innovative Finance Hub (IF Hub) aims to catalyze global capital in support of children to fill the SDG gap and radically accelerate progress towards the SDGs. UNICEF. The Communications Consultant is placed within the Innovative Finance Hub, Office of Innovation, reporting to Head, IF Hub.

How can you make a difference?

In support of the 2022-25 Strategic Plan, UNICEF has launched its Global Innovative Finance for Children (IF4C) Strategy document and is ramping up coordinated endeavors to foster and promote the wider use of IF.

The pandemic and the post-pandemic economic shocks are serving to highlight, and at times reinforce, the differing structural issues, strengths and weaknesses within regional economies and the also ability and capacity of individual governments and each country’s enabling environment to absorb these shocks and continue to deliver public services and to their sustainable development visions. These differences in turn can serve to simultaneously compound the need for UNICEF engagement while reducing the availability and potential effectiveness of traditional responses. Innovative or alternative financing approaches are part of the response to these challenges.

The Communications Consultant will provide support on communications related to innovative finance projects. Specifically, they would support in UNICEF’s Child-lens Investing Framework (CLIF) project and other areas on innovative financing and emerging fundraising.

Please access the full ToR and related information here TOR_IF Hub_Comms Consultant v3.docx

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Communications, Marketing, Public Policy, Business Administration, Development, or related field, is required *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 5 years of relevant professional experience at national and international levels in communications or marketing is required

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English are required

• Experience in public or private finance, social impact sector, innovative finance, or new digital technologies for fundraising, is desirable

• Proficiency in conceptualizing design and layouts for communication materials and proficiency design software and tools, such as adobe creative suite, is desirable

• Strong project management skills with the ability to handle multiple tasks and meet deadlines and experience in contracting suppliers and agencies

• Strong ability to adapt messaging to various audiences and attention to detail

• Strong capacity to work independently and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams effectively in inter-divisional teams

• Experience in/knowledge of the UN system and knowledge of UNICEF’s work would be an asset

• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• 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:

• None

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.
• 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.

Please find attached the financial proposal template Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx

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.