Innovations Officer for UNICEF’s Innovations Lab in Kosovo

Deadline: 7 December 2012
Open to: Candidates with university degree and five years of progressively responsible professional work experience at the national and international levels in project management
Remuneration: Not specified

Description

Kosovo has a large youth population with high levels of unemployment and low levels of participation in decision-making processes. Kosovo’s institutions do not universally possess adequate systems to collect, manage, manipulate, visualize, and disseminate data to and from its citizens. Meanwhile, globally, it has emerged that open source, mobile, and social networking technologies can provide an unprecedented opportunity to solve problems on behalf of vulnerable populations. As such, the Innovations Lab has been established to support youth to realize change in their own lives by participating in projects that are developed, micro-funded, and supported through the Innovations Lab. Moreover, it aims to design, implement, and scale solutions involving data collection, analysis, visualization and dissemination for UNICEF’s partners in Kosovo.

Skills needed

• Demonstrated ability to support user-centered technology design and implementation
• Project management (based on agile methodology), including budget monitoring
• Ability to work with a diverse set of partners to create problem specifications, system requirements, and then lead implementation of software and technology innovations on a national scale
• Excellent communication and documentation skills
• Ability to work effectively with young people and in a multilingual environment

Qualifications and competencies

• Advanced university degree, ideally related to the ICT and/or youth and/or innovations sector
• Five years of progressively responsible professional work experience at the national and international levels in project
  management

Scope of work

1. Under supervision of the Deputy Head of Office (and in coordination with Youth Officer of UNICEF Kosovo and UNICEF Tech4Dev colleagues in NY), implement the overall Innovations Lab strategy/action plan, including formulation, design, planning and management, with a strategic focus on leveraging technological innovations for Kosovo’s youth and children.
2. Working with the Youth Officer of UNICEF Kosovo, to provide leadership to the Lab team in assisting youth to develop and implement projects, with a focus on ensuring global technology lessons are applied to the projects.
3. Work with UNICEF sections and partners to formulate, design, implement, test, and scale appropriate technological and non-technological interventions to solve data and information needs of UNICEF partners, with a focus on usercentered technology design.
4. Develop partnerships with a broad range of stakeholders involving youth, technology and innovation, both in Kosovo (e.g. universities, ICT associations, open source community, micro-grant funders, etc) and internationally (e.g. UNICEF Tech4dev initiatives, academic institutions, etc).
5. Work with UNICEF Kosovo Data and Knowledge Management team on internal tools for data and information aggregation, visualization, and usage
6. Lead communications efforts to internal and external partners.

Contract type and duration

Selected candidate will be contracted under the Special Service Agreement. The initial contract covers the period of 11 months with the possibility of extension.

Application process

Interested candidates should send a cover letter and P11 form to Mr. Blerim Kroci at bkroci@unicef.org or in a closed envelope to: UNICEF Kosovo, Ali Pashe Tepelena 1, Prishtina. Closing date for applications is 7th of December 2012.

For more information, read the original call for proposals or visit the website of The Innovations Lab in Kosovo.