National U-Report Project Manager, Astana, Kazakhstan

• Country: Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
• No of vacancies: N/A
  
• Salary: N/A 
• Organization: UNICEF
• Gender: Both 
• Deadline: 2024-01-08

Background

The UNICEF country programme 2021-2025 implicitly recognizes youth engagement as cross-cutting strategies which prioritize adolescent and youth skills development as underlying requirements for their meaningful participation and empowerment. The overarching and crosscutting goal of UNICEF Kazakhstan is to promote youth engagement in policy advocacy, provide young people with access to online social services, formal and non-formal skills building opportunities and participation platforms, increase national capacities to amplify their voices and be connected, actively engaged, and empowered, and to productively participate in their communities and society.
According to renewed national legislation, youth is defined as people from 14 to 35 years old in Kazakhstan. In 2023, there were 6,5 million youth – 31% of the total population, with 62.2% living in urban areas. The gender proportion among youth is distributed evenly among women (48,08%) and men (51,92%). At the beginning of 2023, Kazakhstan’s youth made up about 60% of the country’s workforce.
The adoption of the 2023 – 2029 State Youth Policy creates a unique momentum to nurture youth-led civic participation, ensure youth voice is heard in relevant governmental policies’ development and promote youth participation in important health and social issues. Modern conditions for youth development and COVID-19 pandemic consequences have revealed new risks and challenges for the health of the younger generation. Youth are often considered as the recipients of health care and other social services; their voices are often missing from conversations about how to transform the field to better meet their needs and support their lifelong health and well-being. Engagement of youth and creating equitable partnerships with them through digital platforms like U-Report – offers a unique perspective that can help accelerate opportunities to improve the health of the youth and engage them in Global Health Security activities. The U-Report Platform can engage with Youth through different modalities: Polls, Live Chat, Chatbots, Community action. Youth voices collected from U-Report are mainly used to inform UNICEF designs of programs and interventions, its advocacy priorities to the Government and as evidence to support UNICEF strategies in the country. Ministry of information and culture of Kazakhstan has impressed its interest in this social messaging tool and data collection system developed by UNICEF to improve citizen engagement, inform leaders, and foster positive change. Beyond being a powerful tool to connect with young people, U-Report is a timely and critical resource to prove life-saving information and gather real-time feedback from young people in affected areas. In terms of health security, having an extended network of young people connected through U-Report can be instrumental at the onset of an outbreak as well as during emergency response. Considering that young people could positively contribute towards the development of the urban and rural areas they are living in, propose innovative ideas and lead needs-based solutions development and implementation, UNICEF in Kazakhstan has been engaging youth and promoting youth participation giving them the opportunities and supporting them to be strong advocates and activists, particularly on the topics of eco-friendly, mindful and non-violent way of living, climate change, water scarcity, mental wellbeing, online safety etc.
To ensure a launch of U-Report and scale up the initiative at national level with a concrete plan to reach into communities, gather relevant information, and use it to empower them to address child and adolescent relevant issues as well as use this information to exert influence on local, regional and national stakeholders, UNICEF Kazakhstan is looking for a National U-Report Project Manager. He/she is also expected to ensure that information collected feeds into UNICEF and the Government of Kazakhstan’s’ joint strategic goals, outlined in the current Country Programme Document (CPD 2021-2025) and its relevant strategies.

Purpose of Activity/Assignment

The main objective of the consultancy is to provide technical assistance to UNICEF Country Office in Kazakhstan in launching and managing the U-Report Kazakhstan initiative with a concrete plan to reach into communities, gather relevant information, and use it to empower them to address adolescent and youth relevant health, education, environmental and social issues as well as use this information to exert influence on local, regional and national stakeholders as part of a larger governance and accountability strategy. He/she is also expected to ensure that information collected feeds into Government of Kazakhstan and UNICEF’s the programmatic goals with a specific focus on Global Health Security agenda, online safety, skills, girls empowerment, and climate change.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
• Education: Project management, social policy, sociology, youth policy, communications, IT or a similar field.
• Experience:
– At least 4 years of progressive experience in project management, partnership development, social policy, youth engagement and youth outreach
– Proven ability to conceptualize, plan and execute ideas as well as to transfer knowledge and skills
– Fluency in written and spoken English and Russian, knowledge of Kazakh language will be a strong asset
– Knowledge and experience of administering websites and social media accounts will be an asset
– Highly developed communication and partnership skills.
– Ability to work independently and respond to feedback in a timely and professional manner.
– Excellent analytical and organizational skills, attention to detail, and ability to contribute to a team.
– Experience of working with civil society partners
– Experience with a high-level communications campaign across multiple mediums, with national brand recognition
– Experience engaging with political structures, civil society pressure groups, and other channels of national influence
– Experience with monitoring and evaluation of large, complex projects with multi partner engagement.
– Prior working experience with UN agency is an asset.

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