Young Innovator Fellow

Details

Mission and objectives

The UNFPA Asia and Pacific Regional Office, in line with the UNFPA Strategic Plan 20222025, will contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 5 advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, with the aim of achieving zero violence and harmful practices against women and girls. The Global Programme on Addressing Gender Biased Sex Selection aims to build on and strengthen evidence-based national policies and programmes to address son preference, low value of girls and gender inequalities resulting in gender-biased sex selection (GBSS) in identified countries of prevalence in Asia in line with SDG 5 on gender equality and the empowerment of women, in particular SDG Target 5.3 on eliminating all forms of harmful practices.

Context

Enabling young people to realize their full social, economic and human potential is a key aspect of UNFPA’s mandate. Our Fellows are innovative young people from around the world who have demonstrated commitment to development issues within their communities. The Young Innovators Fellowship program brings young people into UNFPA with a dedicated focus on both providing a youth perspective and driving innovation. This exciting opportunity sees fellows undergo leadership training and support innovation efforts in UNFPA Regional or Country Offices in a capacity relevant to their experience. Our goal is to provide fellows with the tools, skill sets, international experience and exposure to innovation to empower them to realize their career goals, thus building national capacity. Fellows in turn provide innovative insights and ideas that will enable us to be better aligned with development issues in their community.

Task description

The UNFPA Young Innovator Fellow will contribute to UNFPA’s innovation priorities in a number of ways, including: strengthening the innovation architecture; supporting the scale-up of innovations; forming partnerships; strengthening financing for innovation; and expanding the communities and culture for innovation. UNFPA’s Asia and the Pacific Regional Office (APRO) was established in July 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand, and provides a key link between UNFPA’s organization-wide vision, strategies, policies and analyses, on one hand, and the needs of the region and programme countries therein, on the other. APRO provides leadership in positioning the agenda of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at the forefront of poverty reduction and development strategies, policies, and debates throughout the region. APRO facilitates advocacy and policy dialogue to generate the political will and financial resources needed to achieve the goals of the ICPD Programme of Action, which emphasizes the integral links between population and development, focusing on meeting the needs of individual women, men and young people. The ICPD agenda underpins UNFPA’s work globally, and APRO is responsible for developing and maintaining strategic partnerships and regional networks to ensure broad ownership of the agenda in the region. This includes facilitating the exchange of knowledge and working to improve the quality of programming. UNFPA’s development effectiveness depends upon its knowledge capacity, innovative practices, and learning culture. Making quality assured knowledge available to UNFPA staff, which in turn makes knowledge available to key stakeholders, is a principle of UNFPA’s knowledge management and innovation approach. Under the direct supervision of the Regional Programme Specialist, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks: 1. Mapping of innovation networks, innovation hubs and innovation think tanks in Asia and the Pacific; 2. Support coordination of UNFPA AP Innovation Focal Point Network, including but not limited to organising internal webinars/meetings and sharing sessions by external partners, managing the AP Innovation Knowledge Hub and reviewing progress of UNFPA country offices in implementing their innovation targets; 3. With innovation and human resources colleagues, monitor and promote innovation capacity building programmes and with the Regional Programme Specialist, implement Human Centred Design and other virtual innovation trainings in the region; and 4. Support the implementation of the Asia and the Pacific Big Data/AI partnership. Duties The Young Innovator Fellow will provide support in strengthening APRO’s approach to innovation through analytic research and facilitating information exchange. The Young Innovator Fellow is responsible for supporting the implementation of ongoing innovation activities, such as supporting the development of a regional action plan to implement the UNFPA Innovation Roadmap and the establishment of an Asia and the Pacific big data/artificial intelligence work plan. This will be achieved by conducting desk reviews, organising webinars, facilitating dialogue and information exchange, mapping innovation networks and partners and identifying innovation training opportunities and materials. At the end of the UNV assignment, the UNV will have: 1. Mapped innovation networks, innovation hubs and think tanks in Asia and the Pacific; 2. Supported implementation of learning sessions and knowledge exchanges for country offices across Asia and the Pacific region. These sessions will be in English; 3. Written a compendium of innovation capacity building opportunities, developed promotional materials and compiled a summary of innovation training opportunities, courses and programmes for Asia and the Pacific staff. The Young Innovator Fellow will have analysed UNFPA Asia and the Pacific training completion rates and identified innovation learning needs; and 4. Documented Asia and the Pacific inputs into the regional Big Data/AI Strategy and country support plan. The assignment will include mission travel to New York, once for a capstone to conclude the fellowship. Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to: ● Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day); ● Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country; ● Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities; ● Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.; ● Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly-arrived UN Volunteers; ● Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering, or encourage relevant local individuals and organisations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.