Programme Design and Coordination support (UNDP Accelerator Lab)

Contract

This is a UNV National Specialist contract. This kind of contract is known as National UN Volunteer. It is normally only for nationals. More about UNV National Specialist contracts.

UNDP is the leading United Nations organization fighting to end the injustice of poverty, inequality, and climate change. Working with our broad network of experts and partners in 170 countries, we help nations to build integrated, lasting solutions for people and planet. Today’s complex challenges cannot be tackled neatly in isolation. For UNDP, this means focusing on systems, root causes and connections between challenges—not just thematic sectors—to build solutions that respond to people’s daily realities.

About UNDP Accelerator lab:- UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.

UNDP Egypt Accelerator Lab is part of a global learning network asking three big questions: how do we better tackle complex and fast-moving challenges? how do we find the most relevant solutions that work locally? how do we learn more quickly about what works and what doesn’t? A network of 91 Accelerator Labs serving 114 countries that work together with global and national partners and local innovators to develop new approaches to address the complexity of current development challenges and be the fastest learning on sustainable development challenges.

One of the three main mandates of UNDP accelerator lab is Experimentation. Experimenters work directly with UNDP country office and external partners to rapidly design and test portfolios of potential solutions addressing complex development challenge. . Experiments bring tangible evidence early in the process when it is still possible to change the direction without big costs.

Current experimentation work intersects highly with the nexus of agri-food systems, climate action, and resilience of local communities.

About the role:-

You are capable and excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks. You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors. You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.

You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity. You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends. You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiguity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed.

UNDP Egypt Accelerator lab is currently active across different frontier challenges (agri-food system transformation, financial inclusion, green transition, sustainable tourism, risk insurance, etc.). Under the guidance and supervision of the Head of Experimentation, the national UNV will assist the UNDP Accelerator lab in Egypt to design and co-ordinate new programmatic experiments to test what potential solution works and what doesn’t before scaling. This includes research work, reaching out to and liaising with partners, supporting in programme design, overseeing execution, and reporting.

Within the delegated authority and under the supervision of the Head of Experimentation at UNDPAccelerator Lab, the UNV Programme design and co-ordination support will:

Support in Experiment portfolio design:-

• Works with the team and partners in mapping the context and nature of development challenges, this might include secondary and primary research, stakeholders engagement, field visits, etc. • Identifying levers and logic for intervention, building hypotheses of change that are a fit to the system level challenges identified
• Support the Accelerator lab team in the design of experiments and testing prototypes, including (but not limit to) defining variables, formulating hypotheses, and coordinating experimental protocols • Develop a framework to capture the learning from the experiments in such a way that it favours critical reflection and rapid adaptation over static reporting

Support in Management of tests and experiments:-

• Provide technical guidance for experiment design, roll-out and validation based on the experiment conditions, resources available, and requirements • Proactively manage risks within experiments including those related to ethics and privacy • Examine the results from the testing of prototypes and translate them into proposals informing programmatic decisions on next steps and implications for improvement, spin offs and scaling-up, where warranted. • Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab

Working out loud:-

• Proactively use blog and social media to share findings from the experiments and portfolio implementation • Working with clients to encourage reflection and capturing of insights from individual experiments, as they related to the overall portfolio logic • Support in coordination webinars or events for knowledge sharing and different exchanges. • Support with other forms of reporting as needed by the organization, partners, or donors.

Results/expected outputs:

• As an active member of UNDP Accelerator Lab team, efficient, timely, responsive, client-friendly and high-quality support rendered to UNDP and its beneficiaries in the accomplishment of her/his functions, including: • Results/Outputs can be modified as appropriate; should not entirely mirror the task description but serve as a basis for work-plan and deliverables] ; • Summary documents of the design, execution and evaluation of experiments, applied within the framework of and in lines with the work and initiatives underway, defined by the 2023 programming of the Accelerator lab. • Products of the methodology used for experimentation, from design to evaluation, through different tools. • Production of blogs about the learning and lessons learned in the processes of experimentation, prototyping and piloting. • Contribution to Country Office reports for audits and project indicator matrices on progress in ongoing and executed experiments. • Administrative and operational support to the Laboratory in the management of budget, procurement and finances for the execution of resources related to experiments and initiatives of the Laboratory. • Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective is systematically applied, integrated and documented in all activities throughout the assignment • A final statement of achievements towards volunteerism for peace and development during the assignment, such as reporting on the number of volunteers mobilized, activities participated in and capacities developed.

• Professionalism; • Integrity; • Teamwork and respect for diversity; • Commitment to continuous learning; • Communication.

• Demonstrated ability to design experiments, validate hypotheses and test prototypes; • Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation; • Previous experience in Agri-food and financial inclusion sector is a plus; • Master’s degree in related fields is a plus. • Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as for example. Systems Thinking, Behavioral Insights, Qualitative and Quantitative User Research, Co-creation, Prototyping, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Data Empowerment, and Collective Intelligence; • Demonstrated ability to work with clients to help surface un articulated needs; • Demonstrated ability in running co-design sessions and capacity-building; • demonstrated ability to write clearly correctly and concisely.

Cairo, Egypt is a family duty station with a wide range of services (health, education and leisure) and good living conditions. Cairo (and Egypt) has long been a center of the region’s political and cultural life, with high levels of tourism. Like other similar cities, Cairo offers good quality of life in terms of access to shopping centers, banks, medical services, educational facilities, cultural events, etc.

The Arab Republic of Egypt has a unique geographical position in Northeast Africa, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, on the Mediterranean and Red Sea, and its connection to Sub Saharan Africa through the Nile Valley. The country is defined by desert and the Nile, the longest river on Earth.