#uinnovate By UNICEF Innovation The most crucial item that migrants and refugees carry is a smartphone. Families critically depend on smartphone apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Google Maps to coordinate their journeys. However, they have few opportunities to charge their phones. What if a group of unusual suspects, thought-leaders, could […]
Partners
Working and Playing at the UNICEF Innovation Unit
By Bhavika Aggarwal, 2015 Fall Design Fellow Last fall, the UNICEF Innovation Unit accorded me a wonderfully exciting opportunity to volunteer with the Visual Strategy team as a Design Fellow. As part of the fellowship, I came in twice a week to the 6th floor open office at the New York […]
UNICEF Jordan Internship Programme 2016
UNICEF Jordan Country Office invites applications from students enrolled in Master’s programme for a full-time internship programme from 5 Jun 2016 to 11 Aug 2016. Objective: The intern will work as part of an interdisciplinary team to support a cutting edge data science project for one of UNICEF Jordan’s sector […]
What it means to be a design fellow at the Innovation Unit
By Minji Gim, 2015 Fall Design Fellow 1. You’ll be a better designer. What I learned from my 3-month fellowship was not related to design. I learned to be a better designer by having the ability to sell an idea within 10 seconds and argue with a smiling face. The Innovation […]
Why it’s important to bring 3D biofabrication and other health technologies to the most disadvantaged
A scientist’s musings at the Global Innovations for Children and Youth Summit By Sean Powell, a full-time academic at the Queensland University of Technology (https://au.linkedin.com/in/imaginethinkcreate). He spoke at the “Start Up to Scale Up Summit,” organized by UNICEF and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland on 9-10 November. You […]
Prototyping Human-Centered Policies for Children in Nicaragua
By Milja Laakso, Programme Officer, Innovation Unit, UNICEF In an evangelic free church in Orinoco, a Garifuna village in the Southern Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, the Saturday night mass is in its full bloom. With the aid of an electronic synthesizer and a drum set, a roomful of people are […]
Mari Nakano wins the Young Innovator Alumni Award from Designmatters ArtCenter College of Design
By Pilar Lagos For us, the lucky ones who have the privilege of working with Mari Nakano, Visual Strategy Lead at UNICEF’s Innovation Unit, we can all agree that she is amazingly talented, energetic, and puts her heart into everything that she creates. With a casual post on her Facebook […]
Tanzania Extends Successful Partnership with Mobile Provider Tigo
On Tuesday, 24 November, UNICEF Tanzania signed an MOU with mobile network operator Tigo. This MOU extends Tigo’s support of UNICEF Tanzania’s work to improve the lives of children using mobile technologies. The 2016-2018 partnership includes financial and in-kind contributions worth about TZS $ 354,625,172 (USD $165,000). These contributions will be used to […]
The future of data
In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner at the US. Office of Patents, declared: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Good old Charles won’t go down in history alone for his poor forecasting skills. He will be joined by many others who, in their shortsightedness or overly optimistic hopes, […]
Why budding designers should keep social impact in mind when designing
By Pilar Lagos On 8 September 2015, Blair Palmer, UNICEF Innovation San Francisco Lab Lead and I chatted with Raja Schaar, Lecturer & Design Instructor at Georgia Tech about her teaching methodologies and how she challenged her students to build wearables keeping social impact in mind. Raja Schaar created the […]