Consultancy - Gender Gaming Challenge, Helsinki Finland or Stockholm Sweden, Office of Innovation, 120 days for a period 8 months

UNICEF's Office of Innovation is hiring a Gender Gaming Challenge Consultant to support the development and management of UNICEF’s forthcoming MASHUP Challenge.

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, innovate...

The Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyze UNICEF and partners’ expertise and resources to solve key challenges facing children and young people, with a view to sourcing, accelerating and scaling the most effective solutions to accelerate progress towards achieving the SDGs.   To achieve this the Office of Innovation uses an innovation portfolio management approach and leverages support from a range of stakeholders including from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector, young people and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

THE MASHUP

Context

The gaming industry has a gender problem. The gaming industry reinforces gender discriminatory norms through the hypermasculine male and sexualized female characters the industry commonly uses. Gender violence against women and girls, cyber bullying and predatory behaviors are also prominent issues in the gaming industry. With almost 47% of all gamers being female, these issues are more problematic than ever. The gaming industry’s gender problem inadvertently contributes to widening the gender digital divide too. Videogames give boys an early employability edge in becoming comfortable with using devices and the internet at a young age.

UNICEF’s Gender Equality Innovation portfolio supports the scale-up of radically innovative solutions that tackle gender problem statements that have been identified as organizational priorities. Gender discriminatory norms, online safety of girls, the gender digital divide are all problem areas of focus for UNICEF’s Gender Equality Innovation Portfolio and as such there is a strong alignment between the portfolio and the gaming industry’s gender problem.

The MASHUP Concept  

 To address these challenges, UNICEF, through its Gender Equality Innovation Portfolio, plans to build a pipeline of scalable and radically innovative solutions that can reach millions of girls and women through partnerships with the gaming industry. UNICEF and leading global firms from the gaming industry will team up to develop a vision for “what is better in the gaming industry for girls and women”.  This initiative will marry (”MASH”) the expertise of leading gaming companies and their existing technologies/products with UNICEF’s in-depth understanding of and proximity to the said problems. UNICEF and gaming firms will reimagine existing gaming products, processes and gaming content to address the identified priority problem areas. The MASHED products will build on UNICEF’s proximity to the end user for testing and will also leverage the company’s expertise in developing games and ability to scale.

Main deliverables:

Under the supervision of the OOI Gender Innovation Portfolio Manager, and in close collaboration with the OOI Partnerships & Communication team and the Programme Group Gender team:

1. Co-develop and pilot 5 altered or completely new (MASHED) gaming products each reaching hundreds of thousands with 2-3 leading companies in the gaming industry.
2. Over the course of 6 months, UNICEF will work with 2-3 leading game industry companies that hold like-minded values to develop MASHED products, run user testing in UNICEF COs and scale up on their game platform. The gaming companies will be matched with identified Country Offices that have a child population profile that makes working on an innovative grassroots solution relevant and valued (e.g. children with connectivity, access, devices, leisure time). The MASHED products will be co-created with young people.

2. Game Over Toolkit: This work will simultaneously be testing and refining tools and capacity building resources for game developers to do this type of work, flowing into the Game Over Toolkit. A toolkit for ending discriminatory gender norms in the gaming industry
3. A docufilm to capture the journey of Gaming for Good champions for advocacy and engagement

How can you make a difference?

This role will support the design, delivery and overall management of the MASHUP. The successful candidate will act as the main focal point for internal and external stakeholders and will ensure timely and quality delivery of all components of the MASHUP.

Main responsibilities will be:

• Manage: The successful candidate will serve as the MASHUP project manager and is expected to develop a detailed action and resource plans for the successful delivery of the MASHUP. The successful candidate is expected to ensure deliverables are met in a timely manner within planned budget range.
• Coordinate: Act as the main focal point for the MASHUP for all external and internal stakeholders. This will include liaising with UNICEF country offices, regional offices, Gender PD and MASHUP partners.
• Communicate: Develop internal and external communication material with the support of the Partnerships and Communications team, examples of material to be developed: branding, brochures, call for proposals, website, slide decks, email templates. Present the MASHUP in internal and external meetings, workshops.
• Report: Develop key success metrics for the MASHUP and collect quantitative and qualitative data against those metrics throughout the MASHUP process. Feed into monthly office reporting templates.
• Support: Provide remote technical support and advice to MASHUP projects on innovation, gender and gaming.

Please note that the support and lead responsibilities may be varied, by mutual agreement.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in  Business, Engineering, Computer Science or another relevant field. A first University Degree in a relevant field (including Social Sciences, Humanities, International Relations, Economics, Business or other relevant field)
  *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 5 years of professional work experience in a relevant field, such as innovation, gaming industry technology, product development.
• Experience in gender equality and women's empowerment projects, preferred
• Experience in running global innovation challenges, including the design of bootcamps, incubation and mentoring processes, including communication, multi-stakeholder engagement including private sector, and managing relations with those stakeholders.
• Experience in working with multiple countries and with multiple stakeholders
• Fluency in English is required, strong written and verbal competency is necessary. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Payment details and further consideration

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA).

UNICEF Functional Competencies

• Deciding and Initiating Action (L 1)
• Relating and networking (L 1)
• Persuading and Influencing (L 2)
• Learning and Researching (L 2)
• Creating and Innovating (L 2)
• Formulating Strategies and Concepts (L 1)
• Planning and Organising (L 1)
• Adapting and Responding to Change (L 2)
• Entrepreneurial Thinking (L 1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

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.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. The candidate may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid).