Game Changers Coalition – Programme Manager Consultant, Office of Innovation, 12 months (Remote)

Division: UNICEF Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden
Duration: 12 months full-time
Duty Station: Remotely

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture., coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to 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.

Our team
We’re an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

• Looking at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children;
• Investing in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 02 year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries;
• Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.”

Game Changers Coalition 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.

 

How can you make a difference?

This role will support the programme coordination, timely delivery and technical excellence of the Game Changers Coalition programme. The successful candidate will act as the focal point for programme at Office of Innovation, ensuring alignment among UNICEF internal and external stakeholders, Gender Programme Group, implementing Country Offices and others. Game Changers Coalition has significant synergies with other programmes at Office of Innovation, including the RITEC programme and Fundoo – the project manager consultant will be responsible for aligning and coordinating with activities in this programme to ensure synergetic action. If you love being challenged in complex multi-region, multi-stakeholder programmes while delivering timely results and achieving positive impact for children, this consultancy is for you. We expect that you maintain visibility over and alignment with multiple workstreams and ensure seamless internal communication to support programme delivery, while providing targeted technical assistance to GCC Secretariat and country offices on key topics within Game Changers Coalition, such as closing gender digital skills gaps.Y

Your main responsibilities will be:
The selected consultant will serve as a project manager, steward the acceleration of Game Changers Coalition as an Office of Innovation initiative and ensure cost effective, timely and technically sound delivery of GCC activities. The project manager will focus on Game Changers Coalition programme, while maintaining coordination and alignment with RITEC & Fundoo teams, as well as other OOI initiatives, as relevant; furthermore, the project manager will contribute to positive and collaborative partnerships with UNICEF programme groups relevant to the GCC, including the Gender team.
That will require multiple skills and responsibilities such as technical expertise in gender equality, youth empowerment, as well as project planning and delivery, coordination and reporting.

If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here:  TOR – GCC Project Manager.pdf

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

Minimum requirements:

• Education: An advanced university degree (Masters or higher) in International Development, International Relations and/or Gender Studies 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.

• Work Experience:
  • At least 7 years of professional work experience in a relevant field, such as supporting multi-stakeholder and multi-country programmes is required.
  • Experience in gender equality and women’s empowerment projects with girls centered approaches is required.
  • Excellent technical writing, research, and communication skills is necessary.
  • Experience/knowledge of with the video games industry is preferred.
  • Fluency in English is required.

Desirables:

• Relevant experience at country level, particularly in development, fragile settings and humanitarian contexts.
• Experience in the UN system is an asset.
• Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:
The consultant is expected to travel for approximate durations according to the below to fulfill deliverables. The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa.

• 5 days in Germany (Cologne) to support the RITEC-GCC event
• 5 days in one new GCC country (i.e. Bolivia, Bangladesh or Indonesia) to support country office-level implementation of GCC.
• 3 days in Stockholm, Sweden to support alignment with OOI team.

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:

• Interested applicant are required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee. Please see the financial proposal template. Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• 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.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships

(2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness

(3) Drive to achieve results for impact

(4) Innovates and embraces change

(5) Manages ambiguity and complexity

(6) Thinks and acts strategically

(7) Works collaboratively with others 

Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels.

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF provides reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility jobs-near-me.org UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). 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 based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station is required for IP positions and will be facilitated by UNICEF. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Should you be selected for a position with UNICEF, you either must be inoculated as required or receive a medical exemption from the relevant department of the UN. Otherwise, the selection will be canceled.

Remarks:  

As per Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.

UNICEF is committed to fostering an inclusive, representative, and welcoming workforce. 

Government employees who are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government positions before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason. 

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

Humanitarian action is a cross-cutting priority within UNICEF’s Strategic Plan. UNICEF is committed to stay and deliver in humanitarian contexts. Therefore, all staff, at all levels across all functional areas, can be called upon to be deployed to support humanitarian response, contributing to both strengthening resilience of communities and capacity of national authorities.

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. An internal candidate performing at the level of the post in the relevant functional area, or an internal/external candidate in the corresponding Talent Group, may be selected, if suitable for the post, without assessment of other candidates.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.