For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.
The UN Youth Advocate will be based in the UNICEF Mozambique office in Maputo. The Country Office currently has over 120 staff who work across six sections (Health and Nutrition, WASH, Education, Protection, CAP and SPEAR), Programme Coordination, Operations and Front Office. In 2015, the Mozambique office successfully implemented a Youth Volunteers Pilot with 12 national Youth UNVs recruited and on boarded for one to two years. In two occasions, two formed UNVs have been subsequently recruited as national staff.
The Volunteer will be situated within the Communication, Adolescents and Public Advocacy – CAP – section and will report to the Adolescents Development Specialist Massimiliano Sani.
The UN Youth Volunteer Coordinator’s work will include engagement with external partners including potentially UNFPA and other UN agencies, government partners and implementing partners. The Communication, Adolescents and Public Advocacy (CAP) programme constitutes a cross-cutting area and works extensively to promote adolescents and youth engagement; to create an enabling and protective environment for children and their families; to achieve behavioural and social outcomes and establish social norms linked to health, equality, education, and protection. In particular, since 2015, in the context of the youth-focused Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV prevention Geração Biz (Busy Generation) programme, UNICEF Mozambique partnered with line ministries of Youth and Sport; Health; and Education; UNFPA and the youth association Coalizão (Youth Coalition) to adapt the SMS-based technology for development (T4D) platform U-Report and roll out a pilot programme in four provinces. This was aimed at improving adolescent and young people’s access to comprehensive and personalized SRH and HIV information through SMS. SMS BIZ partners set up a counselling hub managed by Coalizão with 48 trained peer counsellors, equipped with ICT facilities and a reference guide on SRH, HIV and GBV prevention to facilitate their capability to respond to adolescents queries. The counseling service is totally anonymous so neither the counsellors nor users can identify the other. Counsellors respond to about 500 questions daily, with over 440,000 questions were responded to date. Communication and promotion materials were developed to promote the counselling service while advocacy sessions were held in selected provinces in order to create synergies with different stakeholders. Partnerships with the three Telecom Operators allowed SMS BIZ partners to count on free un-limited SMS for the period of 2017-2020. In only two years, SMS BIZ/U-Report, has exceeded expectations with over 133,000 active adolescents and youth registered by September 2017, using the services for information on topics relevant to them.
The UN Youth Advocate will support the CAP team managing the programme and its partners in boosting new youth engagement activities in the context of the SMSBIZ/U-Report programme, developing regular opinion polls and documenting through human interest stories and blog the results achieved.
Under the direct the supervision of the Adolescent Development Specialist, the UN Youth Advocate will:
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