Country: Uganda
Closing date: 23 May 2018
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
For every child, a fair chance
Uganda is one of the over 190 countries and territories around the world where we work to overcome the obstacles that poverty, violence, disease, and discrimination place in a child’s path.Together with the Government of Uganda and partners we work towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the objectives of the Uganda National Development Plan, and the planned outcomes of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework.
Visit this link for more information on Uganda Country Office https://www.unicef.org/uganda/
How can you make a difference?
Under the supervision of the Education Specialist, the consultant will Support the development and utilization of innovative platforms to engage with adolescent girls in selected secondary schools and youth centers in priority districts.
Background
UNICEF has increasingly leveraged appropriate technology to promote programme impact, particularly as regards to quality education and access to information. To that end, UNICEF partnered with the Government of Uganda to pilot three technology for development (T4D) solutions: EduTrac, Kolibri, Kupaa and Digital accessible learning materials for children with disability.
EduTrac is an SMS-based data collection system, which the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) uses to monitor education indicators more frequently than the annual schools census would allow. The data collection process involves school administrators and district education officers respond to periodic polls via free-of-charge SMS messages, and these messages are visible to national officers and other stakeholders through a web-based reporting dashboard for analysis. Thus, EduTrac aims to support districts in their efforts to improve planning for education while at the sector level, MoES uses the data to support faster, more targeted school supervision and management. EduTrac is now in 37 districts throughout Uganda. It has roughly 10,000 registered reporters in more than 3,800 schools.
Kolibri is an innovative digital education platform piloted with leadership from MoES in 30 government-aided secondary schools with computer labs and 12 youth centers with digital kiosks located in 12 districts across Uganda. Kolibri, which can run without the need for Internet, seeks to provide adolescents, especially girls, access to digital and open educational resources to improve learning outcomes in mathematics and sciences, and to enhance digital literacy and life skills. Through Kolibri deployment in formal and informal education settings, learners and educators can gain knowledge and skills to be competitive in an increasingly digital economy. Kolibri has reached over 2,000 students, 190 teachers, 144 volunteers and mentors, 3500 adolescents in refugee settlements through training and mobilization.
Kupaa is a digital platform that links primary schools, guardians, and the school ecosystems bringing all income and expenditure of the school into one transparent system. The platform facilitates installment payments for school fees (pay as you go) that is linked against a basic database, which allows the administration of the school to manage students, guardians, and teachers; fee structures; track financial flows; and gives real time information to the administration of the school as well as district and national level government education structures. Kupaa is linked with mobile money service providers to facilitate digital payments and allows for the digital transfer of government grants to schools. More than 100 primary schools, 40,000 students, and 30,613 parents are registered in the system.
Digital accessible learning materials have been designed and adapted for pilot in 20 primary schools. This project included designing materials for children with Visual Impairment (VI), Blind, Hard of Hearing (HoH) and Deaf; adapting and aligning the materials to the syllabus/curriculum, and producing the materials in Daisy/other similar formats using multi-media with accompanying teachers’ guides. UNICEF in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Sports and Kyambogo University have tested and deployed these materials in the 20 pilot schools along with the associated capacity building necessary for learners, teachers, teacher educators, parents and the local community. The emphasis now is to ensure effective use of these accessible learning materials and assistive technology and pedagogical capacity enhancement in the classroom.
Innovation is a core UNICEF strategy for delivering better, faster and more impactful results for children. As a global champion of child rights and wellbeing, UNICEF has a unique ability to convene partners from across both public and private sectors – offering a powerful opportunity to shape Uganda’s Innovation in Education landscape around the greatest challenges facing children and adolescents.
Under the direct supervision of the Education Specialist (in collaboration with focal points of respective education innovations), the Education Innovation Consultant will be accountable for providing technical leadership and support the implementation, monitoring and documentation of the afore mentioned T4D solutions and with partners, supporting achievement of UNICEF’s priorities. Working closely with programme sections, the Innovation Specialist will interact across all sections in the UNICEF office and network closely with Government, UN, NGO and private sector partners manage the implementation of EduTrac, Kolibri and Kupaa, Assistive Device.
TheEducation Innovation Consultant will further be responsible for coordinating and facilitating mainstreaming and scaling up of innovations in consultation with Education Specialist and for providing ongoing technical support to UNICEF’s Basic Education and Adolescent Development (BEAD) Section in the identification of complementary and sustainable education innovative activities that are scalable. Provide technical guidance to the Chief of BEAD to coordinate with NYHQ Global Innovation Centre and ESARO /Regional Office where applicable.
Key Tasks:
To qualify asan advocate for every child you will have…
For every Child, you demonstrate…
Our core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.
The technical competencies required for this post are….
View our competency framework at
http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.
Remarks:
Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
How to apply:
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organization. To apply, click on the following link http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/?job=512995