Consultancy - Innovative Curriculum Designer, Office of Innovation, Home-based (full-time), 11.5 months, REQ

Contract

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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, innovation...

The Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyze UNICEF and partners’ expertise and resources to solve key challenges facing children and young people, with a view to sourcing, accelerating and scaling the most effective solutions to accelerate progress towards achieving the SDGs. To achieve this the Office of Innovation uses an innovation portfolio management approach and leverages support from a range of stakeholders including from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector, young people and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

Gender Equality and Gaming Industry initiative context and concept

For women and girls to be and feel represented, safe and successful in all the opportunities that the gaming industry presents, adolescent girls need the skills, the tools, the understanding and the opportunities to join the gaming industry and impact change from within. Our initiative is centered on developing skills and creating opportunities for girls to create and develop the safe and engaging games and gaming content of the future, representative of their voices, that millions of girls and boys will play. Our Concept describes an innovative collaboration with the gaming industry, a first of its kind, building on the Skills4Girls portfolio of UNICEF, to bridge the gap between the skills of girls today and the future of women in tomorrow’s video game industry, equipping & empowering adolescent girls to become coders, designers, & leaders to actively contribute to positive change and diversity in both the gaming workforce and the gaming content.

Who? UNICEF Innovation Gender Equality Portfolio, UNICEF Programme Group Gender Section, 20 Country Offices all over the world with Skills4Girls (S4G) or related programmes; video game industry stakeholders, large publishing and distribution companies, small gaming specialized studios and gaming communities to build upon existing UNICEF programmes around adolescent girls in Science Technology Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) and co-create the future of gaming.

What for? UNICEF already offers Skills4girls programmes around the world to improve girls' access to gender transformative skills –building, with focus on STEM learning. We also know that adolescent girls have a growing interest in the gaming industry as players (they represent half of the gamers) - yet are significantly under-represented in the stories and job opportunities within the gaming sector. Therefore, we are trying to bridge the gap between the skills of today's girls and the future of young women in tomorrow's video game industry, empowering adolescent girls to become coders, designers, leaders and actively participate in this industry in which they are already stakeholders.

What? In our conversations with the actors of the gaming industry, we are looking for innovative approaches to present this industry to STEM girls, debunking and demystifying the different professions it offers, training them with innovative tools to increase their skills, providing them with inspirational stories, and encouraging them to discover careers to make their voice heard in the development of the games they already love to play. This is where innovation happens. This experience will place human design at its center, with girls and for girls, and seeking girl’s feedback at every step, answering questions about what prevented them from learning STEM, how they perceive the gaming industry before and after this experience, in what function they would like to be part of it (if they would), what difficulties do they face, and how can we support them in building the future they dream of.

How? There is a momentum not to be missed, when a whole industry is trying to reinvent the diversity of its workforce and where girls around the world have little to no knowledge of the opportunities that await. We are building upon existing STEM skills programming, improving the software and hardware used, and designing modules that match the skills required by the industry, thus best supporting adolescent girls to seize the opportunities currently going predominantly to adolescent boys and men. The co-created content will range from the upgrade/adaptation/enhancement of the existing country specific S4G material to the organization of gaming (code/design etc.) classes with gaming experts and mentors, to hackathons in several countries simultaneously, so that girls can learn how to create code or designs small parts of video game content. UNICEF also wants to take broader approaches with transmedia to expand the reach of this experience by showcasing successful women in the gaming industry and what steps the industry is taking to include gender equality in games and scenario.

Milestones

How can you make a difference?

This role will support the design, delivery and overall experimentation and test phase of the new innovative curriculum for the Gender Equality and Gaming Industry initiative. The successful candidate will act as the focal point for curricular content and discussions and will ensure timely and quality delivery of the innovative curriculum related components of the initiative (ideation recommendations, curriculum development/adaptation/enhancement/upgrade itself, training material and monitoring and evaluation tools). If you love teaching but also planning and creating engaging and entertaining learning environments, this consultancy is for you. We expect that you will ensure the latest techniques and technologies are incorporated into the classroom and are adapted to adolescent girls. Your curriculum will be adapted to five very different countries in partnership with selected UNICEF Country Offices.

Description of assignment

SCOPE OF WORK

The UNICEF’s Office of Innovation Gender Equality and Gaming Industry is recruiting an Innovative Curriculum Designer Consultant to be onboarded before the 2-day ideation session with gender equality and gaming stakeholders and to continue on for a total of 11.5 months full time including the design phase of the new curriculum and its testing phase. The main objectives are to build upon existing UNICEF STEM curriculum for the Skills4Girls programme in coherence and alignment with the skills needed for girls to be equipped to have opportunities to join STEAM gaming industry positions or studies as well as understanding and measuring how this curriculum will be put in place in country offices within each local ecosystem contexts. We are looking for a consultant with extensive curriculum design, teaching, research, STEAM and systems innovation expertise to conduct following activities. The curriculum is targeting adolescent girls, thus experience in teaching and curriculum design for this age group will be considered an asset.

Main deliverables

Under the supervision of the OOI Gender Innovation Portfolio Manager, and in close collaboration with the OOI team and the Programme Group Gender team, the Innovative Curriculum Designer Consultant will provide the following deliverables:

(1) Deliverable 1: Innovative STEAM Skills Curriculum – the consultant will provide expertise, plan and design a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) curriculum module, or adapt existing content to incorporate content from this module, based on his/her analysis of the existing UNICEF Skills4Girls Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum in the 5 country contexts. This curriculum should be relevant to the gaming industry, but also incorporate building transferrable skills that can be used in other STEAM industries; it should be innovative, drawing upon the consultant’s expertise to ensure proper learning outcomes for adolescent students, engaging and fun methodology in line with the gaming industry required skills. This innovative curriculum should take into account the recommendations formulated during the Ideation Session with key stakeholders. It should be designed with girls and for girls, including their perspective on current Skills4Girls and added creativity, storytelling, critical thinking, hands-on training and other competencies and skills that will allow girls to feel heard, empowered and capable of pursuing a career in Technology at large or gaming in particular. The curriculum should be based on an analysis of the existing landscape of skills and gaming technology ecosystem in the five (5) selected countries with a clear linkage to potential employment in the growing sub-sectors of the STEAM industry, particularly video gaming industry. The consultant is expected to work closely with the landscaping data collection contractor and UNICEF Country Offices. It is important that this curriculum manages adolescent girls’ expectation, build their STEAM capacity and their confidence while highlighting realistic avenues for them to pursue their studies and their career in their local context in line with their aspirations.

(2) Deliverable 2: Capacity building – the consultant will work closely with UNICEF Country Offices in five selected countries from the Skills4Girls portfolio or with related programming. He or She will provide training of trainers (TOT) services by training/mentoring to existing teachers and mentors to incorporate the new innovative curriculum into their teaching practices and their facilitation. The consultant will design training modules and presentations as well as conduct capacity building sessions with teachers and mentors in the five selected countries of this programme, collecting their inputs on how to improve the curriculum further to better adapt to adolescent girls’ needs.

(3) Deliverable 3: The test phase of this initiative will be the opportunity to experiment with the curriculum, its design, its move from theory to practice and its satisfaction rates among the girls, the teachers and the gaming partners. UNICEF is fully aware that a standardized approach cannot be successful in five different countries with the ambition to extend the programme to another 17 countries in the near future, so innovative thinking, adaptive learning, and experimentation to fit the needs of the girls, the teachers and the mentors involved will be crucial. Progress and satisfaction during the test phase should be properly monitored through existing data collection channels and changes in the curriculum will be proposed by the consultant when needed in an evidence-based manner. A monitoring and evaluation framework should be put in place without adding extra burden on the teachers by using to the extent possible existing communication methods with girls like for example UNICEF U-report to see how effective the new curriculum is.

The consultant will also have to coordinate with stakeholders, Country Offices, Industry partners academia partners and other consultants on institutional or individual contracts.

Main responsibilities will be:

The selected consultant as curriculum designer will be designing an innovation curriculum and ensuring the curriculum or adapted content from it will be implemented successfully throughout a STEAM Skills4girls programme. The innovation curriculum designer oversees the curriculum implementation considering that each country office will be mobilizing local expertise to support the adaptation of the curriculum to local context. That will require multiple skills and responsibilities such as technical expertise in curriculum design, in STEM/STEAM, in coordination and in experimentation:

• Designing: the successful candidate is expected to provide planning, and designing an innovative STEAM curriculum to ensure proper learning outcomes for girls in STEAM students; • Training: providing training, capacity building, and mentoring to teachers and mentors to incorporate the new innovative curriculum into their teaching practices and their facilitation, including a module for the hackathon facilitation for girls in STEAM and resource packs; • Experimenting, observing and analyzing: observing ideation session with various stakeholders and drawing recommendations to actions, analyzing the effectiveness of the current curriculum and propose improvement based on girls, mentors and teachers’ feedback; • Coordination: the successful candidate is expected to work closely with the UNICEF OOI team and UNICEF Country Offices in five selected countries , acting as the focal point for the Gender Equality and Gaming Industry initiative for external and internal stakeholders regarding curriculum design and implementation, establishing feasible timeframes to achieve the goals and objectives outlined in the curriculum; • Communication: develop internal and external communication material including training modules easily sharable, slide decks, and group activities support material and templates; • Monitoring and Evaluation: provide evidence-based, gender-centered and concrete measurement and analysis of results of gender equality and gaming industry innovative curriculum. Build a result framework with indicators and a data collection methodology without adding extra burden on the teachers and the country offices • Reporting: the successful candidate is expected to provide develop key success metrics for the initiative and collect quantitative and qualitative data against those metrics throughout the process in partnership with U-report Team and other partners to provide monthly reports and a final report of the innovative curriculum experimentation; • Supporting: Provide technical support and advice to identified stakeholders on innovative curriculum, gender equality, and gaming.

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

• An advanced university degree (Masters or higher) in Education, Curriculum Design, Research, STEAM or STEM education and/or Gender Studies is required;
• 5 years of professional work experience in a relevant field, such as conducting research and collaborating with educators, STEM/STEAM experts, policymakers, gaming industry, gender equality groups and other professionals to develop quality curricula and learning resources, is required;
• Experience in gender equality and women's empowerment projects with girls centered approaches, is preferred;
• Experience designing STEAM engaging curriculum including digital content and quality teaching resources is preferred;
• Excellent technical writing, research, and communication skills is necessary.
• Experience in working with multiple countries and with multiple stakeholders is preferred.
• Fluency in English is required, strong written and verbal competency is necessary

Duty Station

Remote (Home-based). Candidate is expected to be available during working hours in the Europe time zones.

Duration 11.5 months.

Proposed Payment Schedule

Payments will be made monthly. The proposed rate should inclusive of all professional fees, daily allowances, living allowances, and other administrative costs and should assume a full-time commitment. A consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel.

Insurance: Consultants and individual contractors are fully responsible for arranging, at their own expense, all insurance, such as life, health and other forms of insurance, covering the period of their services as they consider appropriate. They are required to certify that they are covered by medical/health insurance.

How to apply:

Qualified candidates are requested to upload a cover letter, resume/cv, and their proposed fees (monthly rate in USD) by 21st November 2022. Please also indicate your availability in your cover letter.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

UNICEF Core Competencies

• Communication (verbal and written) (L 2)
• Working with People (L 2)
• Drive for Results (L 1)

UNICEF Functional Competencies

• Deciding and Initiating Action (L 1)
• Relating and networking (L 1)
• Persuading and Influencing (L 2)
• Learning and Researching (L 2)
• Creating and Innovating (L 2)
• Formulating Strategies and Concepts (L 1)
• Planning and Organising (L 1)
• Adapting and Responding to Change (L 2)
• Entrepreneurial Thinking (L 1)

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.