Content Topic
Innovation
Recommended resources
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UNICEF Venture Fund: Growth Funding
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Strengthening Programmatic Performance in Immunization: Service Experience, Data Use and Management
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Certifications via Blockchain
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Accessibility and Inclusion
Ensuring children’s voices can be heard from any part of the world
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Human Centred Design (HCD)
Creating solutions for children using the Human Centred Design approach
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Internet of Good Things
Transforming lives and providing opportunity, by making knowledge universally accessible
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Real time information - Rapidpro
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More resources
Article
UPSHIFT Across Borders
In Savannakhet province, Lao PDR, 19-year-old James saw a troubling trend in his farming community. “Air pollution gets worse every year because of burning rice straws after harvesting,” he explains. “It’s the fastest and cheapest way to prepare the land for the next planting.” Nearly 7,000 kilometres away in War...
Report
5-Dimensional Web Assessment Tools
The 5-Dimensional (5D) Innovation Framework is UNICEF’s structured approach to identifying, validating, and scaling innovative solutions that can drive meaningful impact for children worldwide. By assessing initiatives across five key dimensions—Innovation, Business Model, Scalability, Impact, and Risk—the framewo...
Article
What You Should Know About Fem Tech and Why
Women and girls represent half of the world’s population (or 4.1 billion) and half of its potential, yet they have been historically underrepresented in innovation and research. Recent data paints a stark picture of what it means to be a twenty-first century woman and girl and highlights the urgent need for invest...
Campaign
Call for Innovative WASH Solutions
The UNICEF Sustainable WASH Innovation Hub sources, accelerates and scales transformative water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) solutions to drive lasting impact for children and their families. Solutions within the innovation portfolios are selected based on their potential to accelerate results for children acro...
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Equity-Free Funding Opportunity for Fem Tech Solutions
The UNICEF Venture Fund is calling for applications from start-ups developing cutting edge tech solutions improving access to quality health care and services, and ensuring socio-economic participation of women and girls. The Fund is offering up to US$100K in equity-free funding to early-stage, for-profit startu...
Report
Financing Climate Future
The urgent call for climate action has never been clearer. By 2030, an estimated $6.2 trillion in annual climate finance will be needed to meet global targets. Yet, young innovators—driving bold, transformative local solutions—remain largely excluded from the financial systems that could help scale their impact. U...
Article
Building the Foundation for Sustainable Innovation
Imagine a world where a student in a low-resource community learns to code on freely available software, or a government builds a crisis response system without the cost burden of expensive licenses. Imagine these solutions being co-created, adapted, and improved by people everywhere—not locked behind paywalls or ...
Article
Community-Generated Data in Mali Boosts Climate Action and Accountability
The climate crisis jeopardizes the wellbeing, rights and health of over one billion children globally. While there is an urgent need for frontier innovations that offer effective mitigation, adaptation and resilience solutions, the necessary investments aren’t being made. The UNICEF Venture Fund’s first Climat...
Article
Youth Leading the Innovation Agenda
In a world increasingly shaped by science, technology, and innovation (STI), young people are the architects of the future. Positioned at the centre of research, they are equipped to define innovations with the potential to shape the future. Alessandra, 17, captures this vision perfectly: “Enrolling young voices ...
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Data-Driven Insights for Humanitarian Impact
Every data scientist knows the frustration of spending countless hours cleaning and preparing messy datasets—a task that consumes up to 80 per cent of project time and derails many promising initiatives. UNICEF’s East Asia Frontier Data Lab (FDL) , in partnership with Thinking Machines, tackled this challenge head...
Article
A Global Movement for Youth Empowerment
Eighteen-year-old Oscamidi Anne from Madagascar has always dreamed of bringing light to her community—literally. After having to leave her studies during secondary school, she joined UPSHIFT , a social innovator accelerator for young people aged 10-24, offering the tools to drive tangible change in their lives and...
Report
Innovation Nodes Compendium: Illuminating New Frontiers for Children
This inaugural Innovation Node Compendium reflects on the first three years of UNICEF’s possibility-driven exploration to unlock new opportunities for innovation, benefiting children in underserved communities.Innovation Nodes are transdisciplinary, collaborative spaces designed to explore uncharted areas of innov...