Adolescents and Youth Development Assistant

For 40 years, UNICEF has financed programs to help children in Poland, bought equipment for health centers, and imported raw materials for the production of children's articles. During martial law, National Committees from Western Europe provided Polish children with medicines, clothes and supplements.

Since 2002, the scope of UNICEF's activities in Poland has changed. Like other highly developed countries, UNICEF currently focuses its activities in Poland on promoting and protecting children's rights and collecting funds to help children in the most needy regions of the world.

The UNICEF Education and Adolescents Development and Participation programme, including early learning, has been working closely with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and 12 municipalities to strengthen the capacity of the national education system to respond to the education needs of refugee children. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, access to multiple learning pathways to refugee children and adolescents was promoted in Poland through the establishment of more than 60 safe learning (Education and Development Hubs) and 56 Play and Learning spaces (Spynkas) through investments in local capacity in coordination with local government and CSO partnerships. This has led children and adolescents to learn and thrive in safe environments, support their learning, readiness for school, Polish language acquisition, overall development, mental health and psychosocial support.

Furthermore, UNICEF provided Ukrainian and Polish adolescents and youth access to skilling opportunities, including UPSHIFT, and extracurricular activities to foster social cohesion and inclusiveness..

In 2024 and 2025, UNICEF Education programme, in close partnership with the MoE, local governments and CSOs, will continue its transition from service delivery to technical assistance, evidence generation and policy discussion. UNICEF is strategically positioned to provide demand-driven support to advance systems reforms and ongoing national plans in relation to the inclusive education agenda, digital transformation, skills development, multiple learning pathways and ECEC for the advancement of the commitments to the pending recommendations on the Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Core Commitments for Children.

The Adolescents and Youth Development Assistant will be supporting the implementation of UPSHIFT programme, U-Report Europe chat-bot and youth engagement activities with a special focus on youth councils/volunteering.

In 2023 UNICEF Emergency Response Office in Poland tested UPSHIFT in partnership with the NGO Junior Achievement. In 2024 the implementation of UPSHIFT programme was supported by several municipalities (Warsaw, Wroclaw, Katowice, Lodz) to ensure its piloting in formal education as well as by CSO partner Pro Futuro focusing on interventions for out-of-school or at-risk adolescents.

U-Report Europe was launched on June 1, 2022 as UNICEF’s digital youth engagement platform to connect young refugees to crucial information about their host countries and enable them to voice their opinions and concerns. Presently, around 4,500 people have registered on U-Report Europe, with Poland hosting the largest community of U-Reporters on the platform.
The U-Report Europe vision in Poland is to engage young people and understand their needs, concerns, and aspiration and to ensure that their voices are heard, and their perspectives are considered when developing programs and policies that affect their lives.

Under the direct supervision of Chief of Education, the Adolescents and Youth Development Assistant will undertake the following tasks:

1. Contribute to the implementation of youth development and engagement activities through partnerships with municipalities as well as current and future CSO partners. All municipal work plans contain offline and online activities focused on young people.

2. Support in monitoring and reporting on the use of adolescent development and participation programme resources (financial, administrative and other resources), verifying compliance with approved allocation/objectives, organisational policies, regulations/procedures and donor commitments, accountability and integrity standards.

3. Work closely and collaboratively with UNICEF colleagues (i.e. Child Protection, Social and Behavior Change, Communication) and partners to discuss operational and implementation issues related to adolescent development and participation; provide solutions, and recommendations.

4. Assist in creating and disseminating youth-friendly content in Ukrainian and Polish languages for U-Report Europe. At least 1 flow and 1 poll a month (Poland specific or global/regional) will be launched to engage young people to share their views on different topics.

5. Participate in achieving positive impact and change through listening to U-Report voices and using the data collected. The results of each poll sent will be analyzed and disseminated through UNICEF internal channels (e.g. to other Sections) and partner networks (e.g. Education Sector Working Group, municipalities and CSOs) to ensure that the feedback from young people is acted upon and is used to adjust and/or scale up programme response. Moreover, the poll results and respective action will be shared with U-Reporters to ensure the feedback loop is regularly closed. The wider public will also have access to the poll results through visual dashboards available at https://europe.ureport.in/opinions/.

6. Support the Education Section in ad-hoc administrative and operational tasks