Partners are the cornerstone to UNICEF Innovation’s success, and there are many opportunities to collaborate with us. Whether you’re a technology company, philanthropist or simply interested in harnessing innovation to change the world for the better, we’d love to hear from you.
Focus Area 1: Magic Box
Key asks: Did you know we are using machine learning to map internet connectivity of schools and predict how diseases move? Learn more here.
We are looking for partners who can:
- Collaborate around your engineering and data science expertise to further strengthen Magic Box and optimize our algorithms; Check out how Red Hat did this
- Contribute to Magic Box’s data set - especially satellite imagery and anonymized CDR - to refine our machine learning models; this is how Amadeus helped
- Financially support our team to expand our in-country presence and hire rockstar scientists
Focus Area 2: Investing in Urban Innovations
Key asks: UNICEF, Arm and Dalberg have conducted groundbreaking market research that identifies 6 areas that the technology sector can invest in to support children and families in urban areas. Read more about this research here.
We are looking for partners to:
- Invest in tech solutions that address one or more of the 6 tech bets -deepeningthe market research findings. Arm and the Gates Foundation are already investing in Smart Water Metering solutions!
- Provide expertise in social impact investments and technologies relevant to the tech bets.
- Co-design new business models for social tech enterprises addressing urban challenges. Check out our work in Côte d’Ivoire and Mongolia on how we can address climate change and pollution!
Focus Area 3: Engaging Youth through U-Report
Key asks: UNICEF has been directly talking to over 6 million young people around the world on issues they care about. From helping young people prepare for hurricanes to providing peer counseling on HIV, U-Report is becoming an essential tool for UNICEF to provide meaningful solutions to young people’s challenges.
We are looking for partners to:
- Financially support U-Report to provide better humanitarian services in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Pakistan, and CAR
- Offer free ad credits and commercial license to prominent social media and messaging platforms.
- Provide engineering expertise to design and build chatbots and data insights.
Focus Area 4: Investing in the Venture Fund
Key asks: Since 2015, the Venture Fund has invested in early stage startups using frontier technology to address challenges affecting children and mothers. It recently announced its latest set of investments (check it out!).
We are looking for partners to:
- Invest in the Venture Fund; the pool of investments we receive help us to support more promising startups in additional technology areas.
- Become a technical and business mentor to startups; this ensures startups are set for success with world class insights and guidance.
- Provide graduation investments to the most promising startups; since the Venture Fund only invests up to $100k over a year, partners have an opportunity to directly invest further afterwards!
