U-report and Innovations for Adolescents and Youth

**Job no**: 574892
**Contract type**: Consultant
**Duty Station**: Geneva
**Level**: Consultancy
**Location**: Switzerland
**Categories**: Adolescent Development

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, every right**

In recent years UNICEF has increased its focus on young people. The UNICEF Strategic Plan 2022 2025 recognizes the whole spectrum of young people, including young adults or youth over 18. It includes in its Change Strategies: “working with children, adolescents, families, communities, public systems and private stakeholders towards more peaceful, equitable, inclusive and resilient societies, with people-centered decision-making mechanisms and increased uptake of protective practices.”

U-Report is one of UNICEF’s flagship initiatives to engage and empower young people. It is designed to strengthen community-led development, citizen engagement and access to and use of real-time monitoring and participation platforms. U-Report allows youth to speak out via SMS and other channels - through polls and unsolicited messages - on what is happening in their communities. It provides a forum to amplify their voices through local and national media and acts as a citizen-sourced, real-time data point for key stakeholders, service providers and decision-makers about the issues being faced in communities. The platform also feeds back valuable information to the U-Report participants, so they are empowered to work for change and improvements in their localities themselves.

uSupport is another UNICEF ECARO’s innovative on-demand digital mental health solution and system-change framework which has been designed to help reduce a significant gap in access to MHPSS care for young people in the region and beyond. Minimum Viable Product for uSupport has been developed and tested, and the solution is now on the verge of being piloted in Kazakhstan, with the subsequent scale-up to Poland and Armenia as the first batch of countries in the pipeline.

**How can you make a difference?**

The purpose of this contract is to support the cross-sectoral innovation agenda within ECARO, nested within ADAP.
The consultancy services will contribute to supporting digital transformation initiatives led by ECARO and Country Offices (Cos) teams of ADAP, Social Behavior Change (SBC), Health, Education, Emergency/Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), etc., including the technical lead role for U-Report[1], and the Business Analyst role for uSupport[2]. The consultant will also support strategic youth engagement and dialogue with youth in Europe and Central Asia, including for social cohesion, climate action, learning to earning and digital transitions (e.g. PATHWAYS and other initiatives in the pipeline).
The consultancy will:

- Support ADAP ECARO in providing technical guidance, supervision, and quality assurance on RapidPro and U-Report to COs and Regional Response Offices (RROs) with active U-Report platforms by:

- Supporting survey design for U-Report polls (e.g. Question design, question logic) relating to topics including citizen participation, democratisation, EU accession, green skills etc.
- Supporting communication and dissemination plans for the launch of U-Report polls in the region
- Supporting collection and cleaning of U-Report data, in preparation for analysis
- The two specific tasks that will require immediate support are:

- Lead the deployment of the multi-country, multi-sectorial regional survey on Climate change and Green skills (in the pipeline, in collaboration with different partners and stakeholders, including the European Training Fund (ETF), ECARO Climate, Education, Emergency/DRR and Communication teams, COs and RROs, Global Communication and Advocacy team (GCA), YOUNGO and Government partners. The findings will be included in the Youth policy statement and Position paper for COP 29 and presented at EFDRR Youth and Children Forum in November 2024.
- Lead the design and deployment of the ECARO’s survey titled Youth perspectives on accession, democracy and rule of law to be conducted in preparation for the Friends of Europe Western Balkans Summit (December 2024).
- Provide technical guidance and support to the German NatCom on the design and implementation of the next phase of implementing U-Report Europe in Germany.
- Lead on promotion of and extension of U-Report Europe to countries in the ECA Region without a standard youth engagement platform and supporting them with deployment, management of the platform and capacity building of staff and partners. Countries in the pipeline are Cyprus, Armenia and Azerbaijan (ongoing).
- Act as business analyst for the ECARO uSupport eMH digital solution