Our Priorities

Three Main Areas of Focus
 

UNICEF Innovation's global team currently focuses on three main areas. Here is a brief overview of each of the three main portfolios of work, a few examples and a measure to implement and scale up these initiatives. 
 

• Access to information and infrastructure remain a fundamental challenge to children, especially the most disadvantaged. Innovation in the areas of connectivity, power, water, healthcare and many other areas holds great promise to address existing infrastructural challenges that negatively impact children today. Basic, life-enhancing information is a human right, and all individuals in a society, regardless of location, literacy level, or income should be able to acquire such information. By developing products, services and processes that provide this access for children that suffer the worst deprivations in society can save lives and contribute to children and adolescents be better positioned to fulfill their potential.
   
• One of the main challenges in international development work is the ability to know where disparities are the greatest, who is not being reached, who is not using essential services and why this is the case. This information is needed in real-time so that we can act upon it. Real-time information can immediately shed light on what works and what doesn't, and allows the situation of the most vulnerable to be understood by all who have an ability to act to address their circumstance.
   
• Youth: The new ability for young people to connect to each other and counsel each other - through both social technologies and technologically enabled social networking - allows them to share and scale their own solutions. When aggregated, this empowers youth to have their voices heard even at the highest levels of government, creating the change they want to see in the world.