Today and tomorrow’s world brings tremendous opportunities and challenges for children and young people. Technology’s advance is enhancing our lives while also destroying future sources of employment for young people. Millions are moving to cities to find a better life, compounding complex urban problems. Data and information are more available than ever but are we using it for action? In the coming years, we will need new approaches, types of partnerships, and technologies to deliver results for children.
Join us to discuss these challenges and opportunities.
Ian Ferguson is the VP of corporate marketing and strategic alliances at ARM, driving Vertical Market Initiatives, Strategic Alliances, Competitive Strategy and Corporate Marketing functions. Prior to this, Ian led a group that drove ARM technology into embedded applications such as automotive, smart grid and networking.
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Sheila Rathnam is on the platform partnerships team at Facebook. Her focus is building inclusive communities by collaborating with global organizations on platform solutions and developing best practices to reach the world’s most vulnerable populations.
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Jad is a Mechanical Engineer working on developing the content creator ecosystem in the Middle East & North Africa @ YouTube. Find out more about Jad on www.jad.me.
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Sergio is an Italian entrepreneur who started his first company while studying electrical engineering at University. Sergio's second venture - Satisfly - helped airlines around the world to serve their customers better by understanding them better. Sergio now lives in San Francisco and heads the technology R&D program at the Firetree Foundation.
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We kick off by examining our work in the context of the global trends shaping children’s lives. From cities that are under-prepared to handle projected population growth to chronic underinvestment in teaching children the skills they need. The future for children and young people is bleak if we continue on the current course. We can and must change this. What and where are the opportunities, and where are we uniquely positioned to course correct?
We are at the beginning of a data revolution that will touch every business and every life on this planet. The amount of digital data is growing at an exponential rate, doubling every two years. For the most part, government and public institutions are woefully unprepared to meet the data challenge. How do we separate the signal from the noise to find insight and value? How do we shift our culture, change the way we work and interact in response to these new insights?
On day three, we split into smaller groups and take a hard look at how we implement existing and new approaches and innovations. We’ll dive deep into what it’s going to take to get started on new initiatives, as well as scale what’s working. Guided by senior leadership across the organization, participate in hands-on clinics that will look at topics from funding to sustainability within a country plan.
Global Technology Trends:
We are at the beginning of a revolution driven by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another. What are the technologies that are driving this revolution?
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Venue: DusharaOne
Opening conversation: What does the future look like for children?
The dramatic technological changes underway bring enormous opportunities as well as many challenges for children. What are these opportunities and the challenges? How do we ensure that children, especially the most marginalized, can bridge the gap of the widening global divide?
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Venue: DusharaOne
Engaging young people, creating change:
How can we link messaging, chatting, pics, and videos to change?
Young people are spending increasing hours interacting with technology. The majority of this interaction growth is happening in messaging, pics and video. What do we need to understand about the way young people are using these tools to be able to effectively engage young people? What are the new technologies coming down the line that we need to prepared to work with?
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Venue: DusharaOne
21st century skills:
What are the skills that young people need for today and tomorrow?
Children are woefully unprepared to meet the demands of the workforce in the coming years. 65% of children entering primary schools today will ultimately work in new job types and functions that currently don’t yet exist. By 2020, emerging technologies such as advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics will transform the way we live and work. These technological trends will create the need for jobs where you need both social and analytical skills. How do we ensure that children are prepared to participate in the workforce of tomorrow?
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Venue: DusharaOne
Artificial intelligence:
What are the opportunities and the human and child rights implications?
Artificial intelligence already has far reaching implications in our daily lives. In the future it will make its way into more and more of our lives influencing opportunities for jobs, housing, and even employment. Is a day when robots rule the world and science fiction scenarios come true right around the corner? What is business doing to align itself around AI and how should the public sector be positioning itself to respond?
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Venue: DusharaOne
The city century:
How can we deliver for children in an urban context and what role will technology play?
For the first time in history more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and global urbanization is only accelerating in pace and intensity. By 2050, about 70% of the world’s children will live in urban areas, many of them in developing cities where structural, social, economic, and environmental conditions are at their most challenging. In this discussion, we will explore the opportunities for technology to support the entire family unit in the emerging urban context.
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Venue: DusharaOne
Diagnosing our data issues:
What data exists about children, both inside and outside UNICEF? What data doesn’t exist? What data do we use, and how do we use it? Where we go from here? What are others outside the organization doing in the field of data science that is relevant for UNICEF?
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Venue: DusharaOne
Translating data into action.
How do we shift the culture and build capacity to use real-time data for action in our programmes?
New technologies deliver the opportunity to have a tremendous amounts of information that is relevant to our work. Whether it’s about our internal processes, or the people we serve, most of this data goes unused. Why is this, and what do we need to do to ensure that we are benefitting from the data revolution?
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Venue: DusharaOne
UNICEF’s ICT Strategy
Building stronger partnerships for better results for children: learn how the ICT Strategy aims to facilitate the innovative use of technology across programmes and operations, with a specific aim at achieving better balance of investments between operational efficiencies and programme effectiveness initiatives. Strengthened business partnerships will maximize value from ICT investments, help UNICEF anticipate future needs and facilitate the flow of ideas towards innovative solutions.
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Venue: DusharaOne
Partnering with the private sector on data:
How can we develop smart approaches to partnering with the private sector around data?
Data for children is a team sport and UNICEF cannot go it alone. Our current data efforts are heavily focused on strengthening government systems and actors, however, data demand, supply, and use are not the exclusive province of government. An increasingly wide array of players generates and accumulates data that could be put to great use for children. Likewise, an expanding circle of civil society actors are involved in using data for and from children to hold governments to account. How can we best identify, prioritise, and pursue partnerships with them greatest potential for impact?
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Venue: DusharaOne
Moderator:
Toby Wicks
Senior Policy Specialist, UNICEF
Panelists:
Chris Fabian
Senior Advisor, Ventures, UNICEF Innovation
Shane O’Connor
Senior Advisor - Programme Section Freetown, UNICEF Sierra Leone
Patrizia di Giovanni
Deputy Representative, UNICEF Kenya
Evariste Kouassi Komlan
Senior Advisor, WASH, UNICEF
Lunch
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Venue: The Spice Garden
After lunch, we take a hard look at how we implement existing and new approaches and innovations. We’ll dive deep into what it’s going to take to get started on new initiatives, as well as scale what’s working. Guided by experts across the organization, we’ll participate in hands-on clinics that will look at topics from funding to sustainability within a country plan.
Deep Dive:
What’s a Magic Box?
MagicBox brings together public and private sector data to be able to more precisely respond to threats such as epidemics and natural disasters . Come find out how through using global travel data, high-res weather information and call records, combined with computational techniques -such as Artificial Intelligence, we’re starting to be able to predict where diseases will spread, and have a more granular view on where the most need is following natural disasters. We’ll also be exploring opportunities and applications within a country context.
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Venue: DusharaOne
Deep Dive:
Innovation Partnerships - the ‘How To’
Innovation and technology are at the core of many of the organization’s recent partnerships. Find out about UNICEF’s vision for engaging with business, share best practices and lessons learned, discuss ways to tap into business expertise, and learn how to manage these complex relationships. Come equipped with your partnership experiences and questions.
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Venue: DusharaOne
Deep Dive:
The Ins and Outs of UNICEF’s Innovation Fund
The Innovation Fund invests in early-stage open source solutions and pilots – find out more about how the Innovation Fund invests in startups developing solutions in your country and how to join the portfolio as a country office.
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Venue: DusharaOne
*Deep Dive:
Facebook’s Free Basics and the Internet of Good Things
The Internet of Good Things helps to bridge the digital divide and connects the unconnected to information and tools that improve their lives. Learn how UNICEF country offices partner with facebook’s Free Basics initiative to provide access to vital protection, education and health messages to the hard to reach population.
Venue: Dushara 1
*Deep Dive:
Primero - smarter child protection data management
Primero is an open source web/mobile app that manages sensitive data for Child Protection programmes with case management, incident monitoring, and family tracing and reunification functionality. Join us to discuss how we can bring coherence to child protection data management, reduce barriers to uptake for partners, and leverage UNICEF's global infrastructure to bring better tools to field-based teams.
Venue: Gamilat
*Deep Dive:
The future of U-Report
A 2015-2016 independent evaluation recommended that UNICEF roll out U-Report globally. It also warned that if U-Report is used without specificity, UNICEF will leave their "most powerful tool on the shelf”. Join us to get the most out of U-Report. Hear from our partners at facebook on our collaboration, and your country office peers on how they’ve run up against challenges and overcome them. Get a glimpse into where the product is going. Dust of your phone and be ready to have some fun!
Venue: Gamilat
*Deep Dive:
Using YouTube for social good
Find out about the fundamentals of using YouTube for social good at a roundtable discussion with Jad Esber from YouTube and some top Jordanian YouTube creators on the power of storytelling, collaborating with social influencers and engaging with your community through video.
Venue: Dushara 1