Consultancy - Learning Innovation Portfolio, Home-based, Office of Innovation, 5 months (part-time)

Consultant Programme & Policy Innovation

Overview

Support UNICEF's Learning Innovation Hub to enhance educational solutions.

You have:

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, Humanities, International Relations, Economics, Business or other relevant field.
• A minimum of 8 years of relevant professional work experience in a relevant field, such as innovation, social innovation or entrepreneurship.
• Proven experience of developing and scaling innovative solutions, ideally within learning innovation for children and youth, within lower resource contexts is required.
• Proven experience of innovation portfolio management or innovation governance is required.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills including within the UN, private sector and government partners.
• Experience in working with multiple countries and with multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English required.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.
• Proven capacity to communicate effectively across different mediums to engage and influence complex stakeholders (including senior stakeholders) in order to deliver against challenging targets.
• Proven capacity to work with collaborative teams across different locations and with different technical skills.

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, learning

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support the realization of children’s rights are key to improving children’s lives. Worldwide, we innovate to tackle the most pressing problems faced by the most vulnerable children. We take a systematic approach to innovation, applying skills and energy across new tools and technologies, products, innovative financing, and new ways of working to boost our impact.

The Office of Innovation is a creative 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, the tools, the know-how and the partners that turn ideas and energy into scalable solutions for children.

Within the Office of Innovation, the recently established UNICEF Learning Innovation Hub based in Helsinki will become a global home for the architects of the future of learning. It will support the Reimagine Education initiative by accelerating and scaling game-changing digital learning solutions that can help solve the learning crisis and provide access to quality education to all children.

How can you make a difference?

The Learning Innovation Portfolio Consultant will bring to the newly established Learning Hub team strong theoretical and practical knowledge on portfolio management, specially within UNICEF context.

It will support the existing team to develop the tools, metrics and processes that will underpin portfolio management within the Learning Innovation Hub, as well as provide analysis and guidance on transition for relevant projects into the future Blue Unicorn Farm vision, focused on accelerating Edtech innovations with high impact and scale potential.

This role will work under the guidance and direction of the Senior Advisor, Learning Innovation, in close collaboration with relevant Learning Innovation Hub colleagues and with an extensive network across UNICEF divisions, offices, and teams.

Your main responsibilities will be to:

• Develop Learning Portfolio project profile template that can support knowledge management for the building of Blue Unicorn Farm.
• Design of Integrated Project Metrics for Blue Unicorn Farm that can help assess the different aspects of high impact and high scalable Edtech Innovations
• Perform background research and brief analysis on existing learning portfolio projects and produce profile template for each one of them that can be shared for multi-stakeholder review.
• Support the development of a Blue Unicorn SWAT - cross-functional high expertise advisory team supporting the design and launch of the Blue Unicorn Farm

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, Humanities, International Relations, Economics, Business 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 8 years of relevant professional work experience in a relevant field, such as innovation, social innovation or entrepreneurship
• Proven experience of developing and scaling innovative solutions, ideally within learning innovation for children and youth, within lower resource contexts is required.
• Proven experience of innovation portfolio management or innovation governance is required.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills including within the UN, private sector and government partners.
• Experience in working with multiple countries and with multiple stakeholders
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English required.
• Experience of working (and ideally innovating) with and for children in resource poor environments
• Proven capacity to communicate effectively across different mediums to engage and influence complex stakeholders (including senior stakeholders) in order to deliver against challenging targets
• Proven capacity to work with collaborative teams across different locations and with different technical skills
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS) along with core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results are required for this post;

• Drive to achieve results for impact (Level 2)
• Thinks and acts strategically (Level 3)

• Innovates and embraces change (Level 2)

  To view our competency framework, please visit here.

  Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.

• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

Duration: 3 days per week over a period of 5 months

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.

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Potential interview questions

Added 3 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: unicef.org