Our Priorities

Introduction

UNICEF has always been an innovative organization, reacting to the changing environment and developing new processes, products and partnerships to respond to the needs of children, especially the most marginalized. 
 

The world now has a unique chance to speed up progress on child survival, development and protection, based on great strides in knowledge, experience and technological developments. UNICEF is seizing this opportunity by investing in the identification, prototyping and scaling of innovative technologies and practices that strengthen UNICEF's work with the ultimate aim of improving children's lives around the world. Innovative solutions support UNICEF programmes on the ground by improving their efficiency, impact, scale and reach, especially by overcoming barriers posed by time and distance. 
 

UNICEF Innovations have the potential to make significant contributions to all of UNICEF's strategic outcomes in the areas of HIV/AIDS, health, education, child protection, nutrition, social inclusion and water, sanitation and hygiene. Innovations focus on addressing bottlenecks and challenges that are common to these areas to ensure that new solutions generate exponential change. 
 

To identify, prototype, and scale technologies and practices that strengthen UNICEF's work, UNICEF Innovation creates interconnected systems and new networks of problem-solvers that cross sectors, generations and geographies. Local solutions need to be scaled to solve global challenges – and adapted to new contexts. This requires shaping new markets and spurring the private sector to design for development. It means creating solutions together with communities, and with a view to including all their members – preventing innovation from widening gaps. It means doing things differently, to drive change for children.