Consultancy: Edtech Sourcing Consultant, Learning Hub, Office of Innovation, Helsinki, Finland (12 months)

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, 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.
• The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

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.”

The Learning Innovation Hub within OOI has recently been established in Helsinki with the mission to radically transform education around the world by making it a wonderful adventure for every child. The Hub contributes to UNICEF’s Reimagine Education initiative and has the bold ambition to become a global “home for the architects of the future of learning” and help solve the learning crisis as well as imagine and develop alternative learning futures for all children.

How can you make a difference? 

Key outputs of this consultancy position are:

The EdTech Sourcing Consultant will play a pivotal role in strengthening the UNICEF Global Learning Innovation Hub’s efforts to transform the learning outcomes of children through the strategic curation of a world-class EdTech portfolio.

The key outputs of this consultancy encompass coordinating the UNICEF EdTech Award selection process, executing a robust sourcing strategy for the Blue Unicorn Farm portfolio, and facilitating due diligence processes. Additionally, the consultant will contribute to continuous landscape research, maintaining a comprehensive innovator database, and aligning potential solutions with the Learning Innovation Hub’s EdTech Portfolio Problem Statements. The outputs include a curated list of judges for the EdTech challenge, a diverse pipeline of high-quality EdTech solutions, and a well-managed database of cutting-edge innovators in the EdTech space, ensuring the Learning Cabinet and Blue Unicorn Farm are equipped with innovative and impactful solutions.

Your main responsibilities will be:

1. Detailed responsibilities / deliverables.

• Coordinate the UNICEF EdTech Award selection process.
• Support the sourcing strategy to the Blue Unicorn Farm portfolio of the Learning Innovation Hub to ensure diverse and high-quality pipeline EdTech solutions.
• Provide support to the application and due diligence process for the Blue Unicorn Farm
• Support the research and analysis for the Learning Cabinet, Learning Innovation Hub’s edtech challenges and calls for applications for the “Blue Unicorn Farm.”

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

• An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: business, finance, entrepreneurship, business administration, digital business or 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.
• Substantial experience (at least 5 years) in business development, venture investment, or a similar role, with a focus on edtech or technology-driven solutions.
• Experience in sourcing and evaluating innovative solutions, ideally for educational challenges, is essential.
• Experience in managing large scale application, selection and contracting processes for projects, investments or grants is desired.
• Experience in conducting research, particularly market research, desired.
• In-depth knowledge of the global edtech ecosystem, trends, and emerging technologies, with a proven track record of identifying and selecting successful edtech solutions is an asset.
• Experience of working in complex, resource poor contexts is a plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills required, including external representation and presentations, facilitation of networks of communities.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Please find attached full ToR and related information  Edtech Sourcing consultant, Helsinki, Finland.pdf

Travel:

• The consultant may be expected to travel, details will be agreed upon with the supervisor, and travel costs will be covered separately per UN’s travel policy.
• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.

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:

• Interest applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.  Please find attached the financial proposal template Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

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

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. 

Contact: For any queries, please contact: swe-ooi-recruitments@unicef.org