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Digital Platforms: Academia 4 SBC and Parenting Hub consultancy - Global Programme Division (GPD), SBC,11 months, CoE Nairobi, Kenya (Remote) #593037
UNICEFchildrenhumanitarianjob
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Full Description
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, love
How can you make a difference?
Aligning with Africa's Agenda 2063 and Agenda for Children 2040, UNICEF works across Africa to protect children, providing life-saving health services, education, nutrition, and emergency response in partnership with governments and communities. Key priorities include a) Education and Skills: implementing climate-resilient education systems and technical training for young people; b) Health and Nutrition: Providing life-saving vaccinations, treating malnutrition, and strengthening community health systems; c) Child Protection: supporting vulnerable children, including those in regions affected by conflict; d) Emergency Response: addressing immediate needs for women and children in crises.
The African continent represents a diverse set of countries with distinct academic and socio-cultural contexts. With the growing importance of Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) in addressing key developmental challenges, there is a pressing need for academic institutions to collaborate. This collaboration will not only enhance SBC-related pedagogy and faculty development. Still, it will also strengthen academia’s role in shaping and delivering SBC programs that create positive, sustainable changes in the continent, including promoting behaviour-informed policy-making processes.
To maximize the impact of past, existing and potentially future partnerships, UNICEF Global Programme Division – Social and Behavioral Change Cross Sectorial team is supporting the Academia 4 Social and Behavioral Change Network in Africa launched the 1st of July 2025 with the major objective of bridging the gap between theory and practice. The Network is expected to support sustainable evidence generation and skills-building opportunities, increase south-south and north-south cooperation, and pool resources, ideas, expertise, and partnerships to promote children’s rights at scale in Africa.
To support this goal, UNICEF seeks to create a digital platform to connect universities across Africa. This platform will serve as a network for academia to share resources, optimize faculty development programs, discuss pedagogical approaches to integrating SBC courses into current curricula, and provide a space to share success stories. Additionally, the platform will facilitate the organization of annual summits with academia to strengthen knowledge exchange and collaboration.
The platform has been partially developed and now requires some adjustments before being launched. Accordingly, UNICEF GPD is looking for an individual consultant that can finalize the development, design, operationalization and management of the digital platform for a period of at least 6 months in addition to training the long-term platform manager and key users.
The selected consultant will also be responsible for developing a second product, a new digital platform focusing on Parenting in Africa.
UNICEF Global Programme Division – Social and Behavioral Change Cross-Sectoral team is also supporting the parenting agenda in partnership with key stakeholders such as the African Union, and in line with the 2026 Global Caregiver Forum’s Global Call for Universal Access to Parenting Support to elevate universal access to parenting support as a global priority across the life course. As part of the system-strengthening portfolio, UNICEF is committed to supporting the African Union in prioritizing parenting across the African continent.
UNICEF is producing an Africa Parenting Hub as a repository of tools, evidence, best practices, and case studies, as well as a monitoring and advocacy tool to assess countries’ achievements across agreed dimensions. Accordingly, UNICEF GPD is seeking an individual consultant to develop and manage the platform for at least 6 months, in addition to training the long-term platform manager and key users.
The two products could be assigned to the same consultant or to two different consultants based on the technical and financial proposal.
How can you make a difference?
If you would like to know more about this consultancy's scope of work, expected deliverables, please review the detailed Terms of Reference here: ToR Digital Platforms SBC TMS.pdf
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:
Minimum requirements:
• Education: Bachelor degree in Software development or similar and relevant disciplines.
• Work Experience:
• At least 10 years work experience in Digital platform development (create, maintain, and scale software infrastructures—such as websites, apps, and API-driven systems— building secure, scalable, and automated solutions.
• Language requirements: Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another UN language, like French or Arabic, is desirable.
• Knowledge/Expertise/Skills:
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• Software development
• Over three years(required)/five years (preferred) of software development experience.
• Knowledge of open-source development methodologies and good standing in the open-source community
• Ability to work and communicate in an online distributed environment.
• Demonstrated contributions to components in open-source projects. .
• Experience on following web accessibility standards.
• Experience on functional and technical requirements gathering.
• Experience using agile methodology and use of software ticketing system (Jira, VSTS, Github).
•
• UX/UI Design
• Visual design sensibility that is clean, simple, and sharp, with ability to edit as needed.
• Be able to demonstrate a systematic, disciplined and analytical approach to problem solving - paying close attention to detail.
• Be able to absorb, rapidly, new technical information as required.
• Experience on design and functional requirements gathering.
• Experience on development of information architecture and UX design.
• Experience following atomic design and component-based theme approach.
•
• Project management
• Be able to competently plan, schedule and monitor their own work.
• Desirables:
•
• Human-Centred Design expertise
• Practitioners with both academic background and practical experience of design thinking and/or human centred design methodologies.
• Over three years (required)/five years (preferable) of continuous recognized experience in the field of design thinking and/or human centred design.
• Experience in user-centred qualitative research, use of appropriate design probes and facilitation of research activities.
• Strong planning/organizing skills.
• Familiarity with French and possibly Portuguese
For every Child, you demonstrate Care
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
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 reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility 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.
Qualified candidates are invited to submit the following documents via the online recruitment portal (Talent Management System):
• An up-to-date TMS profile and curriculum vitae (CV)
• Cover letter
• A separate financial proposal using this template Financial proposal Digital Platform A4SBCN Parenting Hub.docx
• Technical proposal: Action plan including expected steps for each deliverable and samples of similar work done previously
• Contact details to request feedback from previous employers
Remarks: If the TOR or financial proposal documents are not visible on certain recruitment platforms, please visit our official page Vacancies | UNICEF Careers
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.
All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
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