Partners

On 13 September, three men who are asylum-seekers from the Syrian Arab Republic use a mobile phone to take a selfie upon their arrival on the shores of the island of Lesbos, in the North Aegean region. Other asylum-seekers are nearby. Life jackets and other items used on their voyage lie on the shore.

By 14 September 2015 in Greece, 288,020 refugees and migrants had arrived by sea since 1 January. They are among the 411,567 refugees and migrants who had arrived in Europe by sea during the same timeframe. One in every four asylum-seekers in Europe so far this year has been a child. A total of 110,000 children sought asylum between January and July an average of over 18,000 children every month. A significant number of children are travelling unaccompanied or have become separated from their families on the move. As if their current plight were not distressing enough, the vast majority of children seeking refuge in Europe are escaping horrors we can only imagine half of those arriving in Europe across the Mediterranean Sea so far this year are Syrians. UNICEF estimates that as many as 320,000 refugee and migrant women and children in Europe could be in need of assistance over the next six months. Beyond UNICEFs deep involvement in responding to the crises in the Syrian Arab Republic and neighbouring countries, UNICEF is active in supporting migrant and refugee children in European countries where it has existing programmes. UNICEFs action plan focuses on countries with the greatest number of children on the move, including scaling up interventions in Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and identifying entry points for support in Austria, Greece, Hungary and Italy; in countries of eventual destination, such as Germany; and countries where new refugee and migrant movements could appear.

How These Game-Changers Are Responding to the Current Refugees Crisis

By unicefstories February 5, 2016 Partners, Partners-Academia

#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 […]

Working and Playing at the UNICEF Innovation Unit

By unicefstories February 2, 2016 Partners, Partners-Academia

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

By unicefstories January 22, 2016 Partners, Partners-Academia

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 […]

Sketches of the Innovation Fund Website. Photo: Minji Gim

What it means to be a design fellow at the Innovation Unit

By unicefstories January 22, 2016 Partners, Partners-Academia

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 […]

By Subhashish Panigrahi (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Why it’s important to bring 3D biofabrication and other health technologies to the most disadvantaged

By unicefstories January 12, 2016 Partners, Partners-Academia

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 […]

Local Government officials presenting their plan to prototype education materials adapted to the context to tackle the problem of child labour. Photo. ©UNICEF Nicaragua/2015/F. Roces

Prototyping Human-Centered Policies for Children in Nicaragua

By unicefstories December 28, 2015 Partners, Partners-Government

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 unicefstories December 17, 2015 Partners, Partners-Academia

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 […]

Tigo and UNICEF Tanzania signing MOU extending their successful partnership

Tanzania Extends Successful Partnership with Mobile Provider Tigo

By Dana Zucker December 2, 2015 Partners, Partners-Private Sector

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

By Natalia Adler November 20, 2015 Focus Areas, Partners, Partners-Private Sector, Real-time Information

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 unicefstories November 18, 2015 Futures, Partners, Partners-Academia, Partners-Private Sector

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 […]