UNICEF: 1MIO

The Client

UNICEF is the United Nations Children’s Fund, working in 190 countries and territories and in the world’s toughest places to reach the children and young people in greatest need – and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere.

One of the world’s largest providers of vaccines, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, safe water and sanitation, quality education and skill-building, HIV prevention and treatment for mothers and babies, and the protection of children and adolescents from violence and exploitation. Before, during and after humanitarian emergencies, UNICEF is on the ground, bringing life-saving help and hope to children and families.

The Situation

Ending the cycle of poverty and offering a dignified future to almost 50 million young people is one of the many challenges Brazil is currently facing. The nation has almost 1.4 million children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 17 out of school. It is essential to invest in the future of this generation through quality education, digital inclusion, and decent work opportunities.

UNICEF wanted to positively impact the lives of young people in Brazil between the ages of 14 and 24, especially those in situations of social vulnerability, such as Black and Brown people, Indigenous people, people living in the suburbs, people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ people. With this in mind, UNICEF coordinated with the private sector, civil society and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to launch the "One Million Opportunities" (1MIO) project. 

The project’s goal was to generate one million opportunities for vulnerable Brazilian youth by 2022 following four pillars — facilitating access to quality education, empowering digital inclusion and connectivity, fostering entrepreneurship and protagonism of adolescents and young people, and ensuring access to the world of work through internship, apprenticeship and formal employment opportunities.

The Challenge

UNICEF envisioned the 1MIO initiative as a way for socially vulnerable adolescents to find skilled employment and professional training affordably. But first, the organization needed to build a platform that connects employers (UNICEF Partner Companies) with young people in vulnerable situations in Brazil. The platform would serve three types of clients (young people, employer partners, and public institutions) and required a modern look and feel, use of social media timelines, matchmaking of opportunities based on profiles, and a dashboard of opportunities. The goal was to increase brand awareness and engagement.

The Solution

To shape the platform’s look and feel, UNICEF worked with CI&T on a discovery journey to interview 25 vulnerable youth from across Brazil on how they use the internet. CI&T observed their preferences in colors and internet tools that they use to seek a job, sites they frequent to communicate, how they interact with social media, and so on. CI&T also solicited feedback from UX and UI designers, project managers, scrum masters, architects and the general public to ensure the platform was user-centric.

Working with digital partner Dexa, the teams chose Acquia Cloud Platform thanks to its scalability and configuration simplicity. Given the target audience’s socioeconomic limitations, Dexa opted to develop in progressive web application (PWA) technology, creating a website that didn’t require a high speed internet connection to load quickly, and making it possible to offer much of the material offline.

Built on a stable and scalable platform, the 1MIO site served a large number of young, socially vulnerable Brazilians, helping them seek their first job. The site also contributed to their professionalism and education through free courses offered by partners.

Dexa delivered a complete platform in less than three months, using Acquia tools to ease implementation, configuration, and scalability. The site’s friendly, attractive design kept the audience's interest, even when dealing with serious subjects. Additionally, the new site’s simplified navigation and editing processes increased staff autonomy in publishing vacancies and other content.

The Results

UNICEF now has the opportunity to create one million opportunities for young people, and a unique opportunity to impact millions of lives. The project was delivered in less than three months. And in less than a year, the 1MIO initiative has:

• Worked with more than 90 partners
• Reached 6.2 million young people via the platform, social networks and events
• Generated 50,000 opportunities, including:
  • 10,684 opportunities to access the world of work
  • 11,287 opportunities for access to quality education
  • 22,836 opportunities for training for the world of work
  • 1,000 opportunities for connectivity and digital inclusion