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Innovation Portfolios: Problem Statements
UNICEF’s innovation portfolio approach focuses our innovation efforts on the most challenging problems UNICEF is trying to solve for and with children and young people.
A problem-driven approach to innovation
At UNICEF, innovation is a key driver for transformational change. It's not a quick fix to the massive challenges the world’s children face rather it is a strategic approach to solving problems and the effective management of three key resources: time, investment and talent.
With a robust process of portfolio management across all types of innovation, our network of innovators across the 190 countries where we work, are discovering, co-creating and scaling solutions that have the potential to make global social impact.
A key part of this process is analyzing problem statements. Below are some which are considered by our technical experts as they develop and manage solutions and approaches to some of the challenges affecting children's lives.
Problem Statements
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- Climate/environmental policy development lacks meaningful engagement from children and young people.
- Assessing demand and shaping the market for resilient services (e.g., climate resilient schools and health facilities).
- Quantifying impacts of environmental degradation and identifying the most vulnerable children.
- Climate resilience and disaster risk reduction resources lack integration in emergency response.
- Protecting children’s lives, rights, and futures with disaster risk reduction / mitigation.
- Girls – especially adolescent girls – have less access to skills, learning and relevant employment activities.
- Girls’ voices and feedback are not part of policy decisions and programme design.
- Gender-restrictive norms and stereotypes perpetuate inequalities that affect girls both online and offline.
- Adolescent girls consistently lack access to critical services.
- Community-led first responders face barriers accessing localized materials, constraining their ability to prepare for and respond to humanitarian crises effectively.
- Limited business models for energy supply are deployed in humanitarian contexts, weakening power to essential services that children depend on.
- Gaps in humanitarian data limit emergency preparedness and response, while frontier technologies that could help bridge these gaps remain largely undeployed in humanitarian contexts.
- End-user quality assurance mechanisms are underutilized, leading to missed opportunities to improve the relevance of humanitarian service delivery.
- Innovation ecosystems lack coordinated investment for scaling proven local solutions, limiting the reach and impact of humanitarian innovation (e.g. policy, programme and process innovation).
- A lack of quality data presents challenges for the management of vaccine demand and supply, for informed decision-making that meets the needs of zero-dose communities and for the logistics response for ‘last-mile’ deliveries.
- Without a data-driven approach, progress toward the zero-dose agenda is at risk.
- Behavioural science and people-centred approaches have been lacking in the application of immunization programmes that seek to develop and implement locally relevant strategies with communities, in order to reach unvaccinated and undervaccinated children and adult populations.
- Misinformation around vaccines undermines public trust and confidence in routine immunization.
- Parents and caregivers need support to prepare children for school.
- Delivering basic literacy and numeracy skills requires innovative approaches.
- Learners need skills and training to be prepared for the future of work.
- All learners face challenges in equitable access to quality online learning.
- Children with disabilities require solutions that ensure and enable their access to education.
- The lack of quality and timely data and the limited use of data for decision-making across health system functions present barriers to strengthening people-centered health services for women and children.
- Traditional approaches have been ineffective in supporting primary health care platforms that reflect and address equity challenges and promote healthy behaviours.
- Inadequate funding allocations and rising healthcare costs remain a challenge for the limited budgets of country health programmes.
- Insufficient data on child and adolescent-specific mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS).
- Limited and constrained access to MHPSS services.
- Low capacity of MHPSS workforce to support and sustain mental health and psychosocial well-being.
- Lack of adequate and climate-sensitive groundwater mapping leads to poor drinking water quality, challenges in locating sustainable water sources, and impedes progress towards child development and Sustainable Development Goals, especially affecting Small Island Developing States.
- Insufficient climate-sensitive data and understanding of integrating climate change impacts into WASH programming presents challenges to WASH practitioners modeling long-term sustainability of water resources, impacting the resilience of the service.
- A lack of supportive environments for WASH SMEs, characterized by limited access to finance and unfavorable governmental policies is limiting the capacity of SMEs to expand and flourish, hindering their ability to effectively contribute to WASH governance and services.
- Complexities in innovative finance options make it difficult to implement, scale, develop and identify investable programme/project pipelines and to replicate effective solutions, which is exacerbated by the increasing challenges to secure finance for WASH projects in a resource-scarce environment.
- A lack of quality data hinders the development of effective interventions for preventing overweight and obesity in children and young people, especially in lower-middle-income countries.
- Adolescents and young people face unequal opportunities for participation and civic engagement in making decisions that affect their lives and in creating positive social change.
- Empowering adolescents and youth with skills they need to thrive and take positive action
- Adolescents and young people do not have access to accountability mechanisms to engage and report issues in emergencies and humanitarian settings.
- Adolescent boys and girls face inequality and constraints in accessing trusted and quality sexual reproductive health information and services that are gender-responsive and age-specific.
