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: Project Connect
Key asks: Did you know we are using machine learning to globally map internet connectivity of schools to ensure that all children have equal access to information, opportunity and choice? Learn more here.
We are looking for partners who can:
- Collaborate around your engineering and data science expertise to further strengthen our platform and optimize our algorithms; Check out how Red Hat did this
- Contribute to Project Connect’s data set for internet and electricity coverage
- Work with us on pioneering research showing the impact of connectivity;
- Financially support our team to map every school in the world and to pool global resources for bringing connectivity everywhere;
- Deliver connectivity to disconnected schools
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, the Gates Foundation, the African Academy of Sciences and SIDA are already partnering to invest in Smart Water 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 (www.ureport.in) 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!
Focus Area 5: Drones for Good
Key asks: Drones can save lives by quickly assessing emergencies and delivering lifesaving vaccines to the most remote communities.
UNICEF is looking for:
- Support for the integration of drones into humanitarian action
- Develop + testing of new use cases
- Support for african drone academy in Malawi
- Create a network of vetted partners
- Help us develop child-friendly regulatory frameworks
Focus Area 6: UPSHIFT
Key asks: UPSHIFT is a social innovation and entrepreneurship programme which supports workforce development, addresses youth employment, and builds civic engagement.
UNICEF is looking for:
- Technical, design + e-learning expertise
- Scale funding of $10m+ to sustain UPSHIFT in 20+ countries
- $9m over 3 years to sponsor Youth Challenge scale up, reaching 30+ countries
- Access to local private sector assets + resources to enhance upshift programming
- Support development of a global digital training and resources platform for UPSHIFT facilitators
