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For every child, HOPE

Consultancy Title: Demand Hub Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Health – Immunization Programme Division, NYHQ

Duration: 1 October  2024 to 20 December 2025

Home/ Office Based: NYHQ / Remote

 About UNICEF –

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

 

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

 Facilitation the efficient functioning of Vaccination Demand Hub

Evidence informed demand promotion for vaccine confidence and uptake plays a key role in contributing to improve immunization coverage. In recognition of need for greater alignment and coordination of partners engaged in demand promotion, the Vaccination Demand Hub (the Hub) was established in 2018. The Hub includes core global partners: UNICEF, Gavi Secretariat, World Health Organization, US CDC, the Gates Foundation and USAID and other partners working on vaccine demand.

The Hub is a successful partnership model which has helped global partners to come together to discuss emerging issues in vaccine demand and uptake. Ever since its inception and particularly during the COVID 19 pandemic, the Demand Hub successfully produced global tools and guidance in a short turnaround time to support countries to roll out COVID 19 vaccine and other new vaccines such as malaria and HPV; conducted many technical webinars on thematic topics; convenes virtual and face to face meetings and has been a platform which has allowed lessons learnt and experience sharing on vaccine demand. With global priorities such as HPV and Malaria introduction and scale up, zero dose agenda, catch up and recovery, and several new vaccines such as RTS expected to be introduced, the Demand Hub’s role in providing global technical guidance to support countries.

The primary purpose of this consultancy is to enable UNICEF immunization SBC team in organizing Hub calls and convening meetings, such as the Demand Hub Steering Committee, virtual as well as face to face meetings of the Expanded Partners, produce documentation of actions agreed upon; organize agreed number of technical sessions to build capacity on the new emerging areas in demand and supporting the Demand Hub leadership team to convene and discuss strategic discussion to guide the Demand Hub.

Scope of Work:

Under the guidance of UNICEF Demand Team lead, and in consultation with the Demand Hub Steering Committee, the consultant will support in convening various virtual and face to face meetings in order to foster effective partnerships between organizations engaging in demand work. The consultant will document the agreed action points and follow ups of action points as needed; ensure easy access to stakeholders to available guidance and tools on vaccine demand, facilitate technical clinics in emerging areas of work, as well as, contribute to maintain Hub website and knowledge management platform

Specific areas of work to be delivered include:

Convening of meetings of the Demand Hub (DH) Steering Committee

• • Under the guidance of UNICEF team lead, develop agenda and share in advance with steering committee members for inputs
  • Organize and facilitate DH steering committee meetings, meetings of the Hub and expanded partners meetings
  • Produce and disseminate succinct minutes of the DH meetings with action points delineated, and follow-up with responsible parties on action points
  • Organize Face to Face meetings of DH leadership team & expanded DH meeting
  • Engage with workstreams to convene virtual meetings

 Convening of face-to-face meeting of the Demand Hub

• • Under the guidance of UNCIEF team lead, develop the concept note and agenda and with steering committee members for inputs and finalise
  • Develop participants list with inputs from DHSC and finalise
  • Ensure that invitations are sent out to all participants on time and follow up on confirmations
  • Liaise with country teams on presentations and material required for the face to face meeting
  • Work with UNICEF regional teams to organize venue and logistics
  • Organize a side meeting of DHSC and workstream leads during the face to face meeting
  • Produce and disseminate succinct report of the meeting with recommendation and action points delineated

 Facilitate to organize technical clinics on capacity building

• • Facilitate and support to convene capacity building training, technical clinics and knowledge sharing webinars conducted through the Demand Hub-including to socialize the IA2030 agenda
  • Provide assistance to relevant technical leads in coordinating with presenters on content of the technical clinics
  • Ensuring all the presentation and content is prepared on time for the technical clinics
  • Follow up on the invitations and confirmations of participants

 Workplan development and implementation

Develop and update DH workplan-including DH steering committee and workstream deliverables, calendar of events, and monitor and track coordinated progress

Knowledge Management:

• • Provide content for updating the Hub website and KM platform, including collecting and consolidating inputs from Hub leadership team, workstreams, and partners for content and maintaining the demand resource repository and troubleshoot technical issues
  • Organize at least 4 knowledge sharing meetings of the Hub

Produce and disseminate newsletters (eg: with content on upcoming events, stories from the field etc), 2 newsletters with inputs from the workstreams

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

 Convening meetings of the Demand Hub Steering Committees and expanded partners meetings.

-At least 15 calls of Demand Hub Steering Committee convened with succinct minutes produced

– 3 Expanded partner meeting organised

31 December 2025

31 January 2025

31 May 2025

30 September 2025

Convening of face-to-face meeting of the Demand Hub

• 1 face to face meeting of Demand Hub convened
• Report of the F2F meeting available
• 1 Face to face meeting of the steering committee organized with clear action points

30 April 2025

30 June 2025

30 June 2025

Facilitate to organize technical clinics on capacity building

• At least 4 technical sessions/webinar organized to build capacity of countries and regions in specific technical areas of work

30 November 2024

28 February 20225

30 June 2025

31 October 2025

 Workplan development and implementation

• Demand Hub workplan updated (4 updates)
• Calendar of events prepared for 2024/2025

15 December 2024

15 October 2025

Knowledge Management:

• 2 newsletters of the Hub produced
• Updated resources on vaccine demand uploaded at least 6 times in the Vaccination demand website
• 6 country presentations for peer to peer learning organized through meetings of the Hub and UNICEF internal webinars
• 3 KM events and product dissemination organized

31 March 2025

31 October 2025

15 Dec 2025

31 December 2025

31 October 2025

Qualifications

Education:

 Advanced level education (Masters) in public health, social science or related field.

 Work experience:

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required *:

• Proven track record in programme management and complex multi-stakeholder partnerships coordination for at least one year
• At least 2 years of solid previous experience in coordinating global coordination mechanism preferably in health and SBC related programming
• Strong analytical, oral & written communication skills
• Proven experience in producing knowledge products
• Experience working in UN systems and partners is an asset
• Self-starter with ability to plan and execute projects in a timely manner with strong planning and organizational skills
• Ability to strategic and conceptual thinking
• Knowledge about Vaccination Demand Hub and its functions

Requirements:

Completed profile in UNICEF’s e-Recruitment system and

– Upload copy of academic credentials

– Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :

• • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability

– Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.

– At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.

– Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory 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.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

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: 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy 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. Consultants 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.