Nutrition Programme Internship, Child Health & Development Section, Beijing, China, 2 months, office-based

Contract

This is a Internship contract. It usually requires 0 years of experience, depending on education. More about Internship 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, a champion

UNICEF China has identified advocacy priorities for the coming years, which will involve enhanced needs on Social and Behaviour Change. One of the priorities is prevention of childhood obesity and overweight. Another is one about the importance of mental health especially among adolescents.

China has experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth with impressive advances in poverty reduction and human development in the past decades, it has been extremely successful in reducing levels of child undernutrition (stunting and wasting), however, China now faces a rising burden of child overweight and obesity. To respond to this challenge, the recently released National Childhood Obesity Prevention Action Plan, underpinning the overarching National Nutrition Programme (2017-2030), reflects this determination and ambition at a national level while some cities, like Chengdu city, Shunyi district of Beijing city, are taking the lead on school nutrition programmes. UNICEF will support the government’s efforts to scale up the ‘Nutrition School’, in the following aspects:

1. Improve nutrition literacy in children, adolescents and parents. Promote nutrition education in the school curricula to provide children with the knowledge and skills they need on healthy and sustainable diets.

2. Support adolescents’ meaningful participation in health and nutrition - Provide capacity-building and mentoring to strengthen adolescents’ ability to serve as health promoters through offline and online clubs, networks and forums.

3. Create healthy food environment in and around schools.

Besides nutrition programmes, advocacy is a key approach for addressing the vulnerability of children and adolescents, in the rapidly evolving ultra-processed food landscape in China, and bring the issue to the forefront of the agenda for decision makers. Therefore, UNICEF China launched a “Know Your Food” campaign to:

1.bring attention to the food environment that children face

2.educate children, adolescents and caregivers at scale, on food literacy and choices

3.and to enhance the effectiveness of current national nutrition programmes by expanding partnerships, information, and influence.

In order to understand the exposure of the campaign and intention for behavior change of the audience, UNICEF has been working with partners on a report to summarize results of the campaign.

With this regard, UNICEF is looking for an intern to support the school nutrition programme, including support to develop training materials for nutrition education and adolescent participation in prevention of childhood overweight and obesity, as well as support monitoring report of the campaign, in terms of data compilation, some analysis, translation and proof-reading.

How can you make a difference?

The intern will support nutrition programmes, in particular school nutrition programme and the #KnowYourFood campaign:

1. Support development of materials and report for school nutrition programme

• To support the technical working group (TWG) in preparing meetings for school nutrition programme, in terms of logistics, calling partners, registration, meeting minutes, compiling available data and preparation of reports, etc.;
• To work with TWG in crafting toolkits for youth engagement and improving school food environment;
• To support development of the training materials for school cooks;
• To support other tasks related to youth engagement activities on nutrition in Shunyi District.

2. Support monitoring report of the #KnowYourFood campaign:

• To support pulling together reports from cities, compilation of data on school-based nutrition sessions, and review and translation of the draft monitoring report;
• To support translation of the final report and proof-reading;
• To support a designer in designing the report and proof-reading of the final draft report.

The intern will also be given other potential assignments in relation to nutrition, jointly defined with the Nutrition Officer.

Internship Conditions

1. Modality: Fulltime
2. Tentative start date: early August
3. Duration: 2 months
4. Venue: on site

Travel

No travel involved

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

• Be enrolled in a graduate or Ph.D. degree programme in public health, nutrition, bio-statistics, medicine or public policy;
• Have strong academic performance as demonstrated by recent university or institution records, or, if not available, a reference letter from an academic supervisor;
• Have no immediate relatives working in any UNICEF offices;
• Fluency in English and Mandarin is required;
• Have strong attention to detail and proven ability to prioritize and handle multiple tasks;
• Must have strong written and verbal communication skills;
• Be confident and enthusiastic when sharing ideas internally;
• Have proficient computer skills, including Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel)
• Be able to work individually and as part of a team.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

• UNICEF’s core values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).
• UNICEF’s core competency framework.

View UNICEF core competency framework from here.

• Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies

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).