Regional Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) Officer

La misión fundamental de UNICEF es promover los derechos de todos los niños y niñas, en todas partes, en todo lo que la organización hace en los programas, en la promoción y en las operaciones. La equidad, haciendo hincapié en los niños, las niñas, adolescentes y las familias más desfavorecidos y excluidos, traduce este compromiso con los derechos de los niños en acciones. Para UNICEF, la equidad significa que todos los niños y niñas tienen la oportunidad de sobrevivir, desarrollarse y alcanzar su máximo potencial, sin discriminación, prejuicios o favoritismo. En la medida en que cualquier niño o niña experimenta una desigualdad de oportunidades en su vida en las dimensiones sociales, políticas, económicas, cívicas y culturales, sus derechos son violados. Cada vez hay más pruebas de que invertir en la salud, la educación y la protección de los ciudadanos más desfavorecidos de una sociedad, abordando la inequidad, no sólo dará a todos los niños y niñas la oportunidad de desarrollar su potencial, sino que también conducirá al crecimiento sostenido y la estabilidad de los países. Es por eso que el enfoque en la equidad es tan vital. Acelera el progreso hacia la realización de los derechos humanos de todos los niños y niñas, que es el mandato universal del UNICEF, como se describe en la Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño, al tiempo que apoya el desarrollo equitativo de las naciones.

The UNICEF Strategic Plan for 2022-25 emphasizes structural and norms change to transform the underlying drivers of gender inequality and reflects an intersectional approach to the compounding social exclusion and marginalization related to factors like poverty, racism, disability and migration. With this new, transformative approach, UNICEF is strengthening the mainstreaming of gender equality throughout our programming and systems, while increasing investment in gender-related data.

UNICEF works to ensure that adolescent wellbeing, development and participation established under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, international treaties, and UN intergovernmental bodies, are integrated in UNICEF’s advocacy, policies, programmes, and humanitarian work. UNICEF focuses our efforts in working together meaningfully and safely with adolescent and young people to accelerate the realization of the SDGs.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNICEF has a Regional Office (LACRO) based in Panama, and 24 country offices (CO) operating in 36 countries and territories. The UNV will support Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) and Gender teams to accelerate results for the positive development and wellbeing of adolescents and young people with a special focus on girls their empowerment, participation and leadership.

The UNV will focus in 3 main areas:
1) Support the implementation of the Adolescent Girls Strategy in LAC, in particular the coordination of the Regional UNICEF Adolescent Girls Task Force,
2) facilitate the creation and functioning of a Regional UNICEF Adolescent Action Board,
3) Support adolescents’ and young people’s engagement across sectors and in key regional events.

Within delegated authority, the UN Volunteer will be responsible for the following tasks:

Support to the implementation of the Regional Adolescent Girls’ Strategy and Task Force coordination:

 Support the development and implementation of strategies to advance UNICEF’s adolescent girls’ agenda across the region.
 Organize and facilitate regular meetings for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) adolescent girls’ task force and its working groups, ensuring active participation and collaboration among all members, producing documents and inputs as requested by task force Chairs.
 Maintain, monitor and report on the progress of the task force’s workplans to its Chairs and Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office (LACRO) leadership as required.
 Maintain a regional tracker for adolescent girl funding in the region, supporting country offices (COs) to meet their donor reporting obligations timely and in line with expected requirements.
 Facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders and partners on issues related to adolescent girls to build partnership and drive collaborative efforts.
 Support the organization of webinars, training sessions and workshops in areas related to adolescent girls’ development and participation.
 Provide technical support and guidance to country offices on integrating the adolescent girls’ agenda into their programming.
 Coordinate the meaningful participation of adolescent girls in the task force initiatives as well as towards the Regional Conference of Women (to be held in Mexico in November 2025).

Coordination of Regional UNICEF Adolescent Action Board:

 Coordinate the selection and orientation process of the Adolescent Action Board based on established criteria.
 Together with board members, develop and support implementation of a joint workplan, ensuring their voices shape the Adolescent Action Board (AAB) conformation and plan.
 Design and implement a methodology to build community and peer support among board members, fostering collaboration and mentorship.
 Manage a real-time virtual community using Whatsapp, Teams, Zoom and any other virtual tools to support the Adolescent Action Board (AAB) advance their workplan and receive mutual support.
 Apply all UNICEF safeguarding protocols to guarantee the meaningful and safe participation of the members.
 Coordinate regular meetings with the members and lease with UNICEF teams to implement action plan.
 Facilitate activities and participation of Adolescent Action Board members in the adolescent girl’s taskforce and other related initiatives.
 Document the process of the creation of the board, as well as interest stories of its members and other communication content.

Adolescents’ and young people’s engagement in programming and advocacy:

 Support and facilitate the participation of adolescents and young people, including through capacity building, training sessions in key regional events (i.e, International Summit for the School to Work transition, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 35th Anniversary (CRC35), High Level summit on Innovation on Youth Policies, Regional Conference of Women, and others).
 Coordinate logistics and administrative process for participation of adolescent and young people in presential events including travel, safeguarding measures, preparation of adolescent friendly materials, orientations sessions.
 Support adolescent programming, including, where relevant, with a focus on adolescent girls, to foster strong collaboration on adolescent and young people engagement and participation aligned to key regional priorities and events.
 Support co-creation with young people and innovations aligned to UNICEF programming and key events.
 Support in the development of funding proposals linked to the key regional events, the UNICEF global adolescent girl priority and adolescents and young people’s priorities.

Annual reporting analysis and quality assurance:

 Support the regional quality assurance and technical review of ADAP and Gender CO annual reports, including narrative reports (COARs), results reports (in the RAM platform) and indicator reporting, extracting and collating relevant information for the regional team’s analysis.
 Support the drafting of the ADAP and Gender sections of the regional office annual report (ROAR).