Summer 2023 Fellow: N/A
Office Description
The Innovation Service is dedicated to creating an enabling environment for innovation to flourish within UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, which is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting human rights, and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people. The Innovation Service seeks to foster and support creative problem-solving, experimentation, and new kinds of partnerships in responding to challenges faced by refugees and UNHCR colleagues around the world. By empowering UNHCR colleagues and refugee-led organizations to think creatively, we help to design tangible solutions and develop a culture of innovation within and beyond the organization. The Service is a small team with a global footprint. We seek to encourage innovation across all regions in which UNHCR is present, through five core programmes:
- Environment and Climate Action Innovation
- Data Innovation
- Digital Innovation
- Refugee-led Innovation
- Innovation Learning
Description of the Work
This Fellowship position is in the Service’s Strategic Communications team, which helps the Service to deliver its objectives by identifying and highlighting creative and dynamic approaches being deployed for and with refugees to address complex challenges. This is a unique opportunity to gain experience across a broad range of communications activities and to champion innovative ideas that can make a real difference for people forced to flee. The Fellow in summer 2024 can expect to be involved in communications initiatives that focus on projects from across our workstreams and channels. Activities will be determined in collaboration with the Fellow, but could include: • Coordinating with UNHCR colleagues across the world to help develop communications plans for certain key moments or initiatives. • Interviewing UNHCR colleagues and members of displaced communities. • Writing longform articles for the Innovation Service’s Medium blog about activities and lessons learned. • Writing social media posts to publicize innovative activities across UNHCR. • Devising and helping to execute videos about the Innovation Service’s projects or thematic areas of work (scripting, recording, editing). • Designing social media graphics and other visual communications materials. • Developing communications products requiring a longer time investment (e.g., thematic series of blogs/videos/podcasts; data visualization; web content).
Desired Skills:
- Well organized and self-motivated, with precise attention to detail.
- Curious, analytical, and creative.
- Flair for storytelling and excellent interpersonal skills.
- Ability to work within deadlines and under time pressure.
- Proven writing and research skills. Design and audiovisual skills a plus.
- A background in international relations, communications, marketing, project management, or journalism is a plus.
- Knowledge of humanitarian sector, the UN system, and forced displacement is an asset.
- Fluency in English required. Fluency in other languages an asset.
- Students with lived experience of displacement, statelessness, or migration are particularly encouraged to apply.
