The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) —is a child-rights organisation that was established by the United Nations in 1946.
Today, more than 15,000 UNICEF staff members work in more than 190 countries, including in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach those most in need. Every day, they work together to create a better world for children.
That means when there is an emergency, UNICEF is ready to respond, no matter where in the world the crisis may be.
The United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK) is one of 33 UNICEF national committees that work locally to promote and protect UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UNICEF UK and UNICEF share a vision to build a better world for every child.
Together, we are committed to:
- Advocating for and creating change for children
- Unlocking resources for programmes for children
- Promoting children’s voices
Our shared ambition is to ensure every child here in the UK and worldwide is healthy, educated, and safe. UNICEF UK works towards this by raising funds for UNICEF’s global work implementing programmes together with local government to put children’s rights at the heart of local services, and campaigning for child rights to be protected everywhere.
UNICEF UK is a registered charity in the UK and must be distinguished from any agency of the United Nations operating in the UK. The UNICEF UK Board of Trustees plays a vital role in steering and overseeing the strategic direction of the organisation to support UNICEF and the United Nations.
Our Vision
A better world for every child.
Our Mission
We put children first. We inspire and engage supporters to raise funds, promote children’s voices and create lasting change for children. Our diverse, passionate, and determined team upholds the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for children all over the world, including the UK.
Our Strategy
Our Values
At UNICEF UK we believe in a happy workplace, and in the power of fulfilled colleagues who enjoy their work. Our Shared Commitment is a set of values, developed by and for our people, that sets out how we work together and the culture we want to create.
We are looking for people who share our values, and our passion for making a difference for children all around the world. Our values are:
UNICEF UK Inclusion and Diversity Commitment
UNICEF UK is committed to creating a working environment and culture that supports and promotes equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). In 2023 we focused on collaboration, participation and ownership of inclusion across the organisation.
As an organisational strategic priority, inclusion and equity are seen as intrinsic to our mission. Over the past year, inclusion and equity has become more deeply embedded and integral to our culture, ways of working and systems and processes, enacted through our relationships, roles and responsibilities. The EDI Team has collaborated with colleagues across the organisation to make progress on the following key areas:
- Inclusion strategy: We defined and agreed a new scope for the next EDI strategy, a progressive, bold and ambitious plan that gives us a new, shared understanding of EDI sitting across all that we do. This was developed following a cross-sector analysis of EDI strategies in the sector.
- Anti-racism: We have begun our work toward becoming an anti-racist organisation through delivering on our five initial commitments.
Looking forward, we have co-developed a comprehensive anti-racism action plan for the next three years with allocated budget and resource.
We have defined how we will resource and recognise the work of our colleague networks, ensuring that marginalised groups are not disproportionately taking on additional work without recognition and support. We have also reviewed, updated and promoted our reporting mechanisms and secured a comprehensive learning and training menu for 2024.
Our Communications Team has also led a significant piece of work on storytelling, looking at how we embed anti-racism through the stories that we tell.
- Inclusive language: Colleagues now have a shared framework that aims to help them to feel more confident in engaging in EDI discussions, promoting collective understanding across the organisation. Workshops have been developed for delivery in 2024, based on focus groups conducted with colleagues with lived experience, helping us to define the language that we want to use.
- Accessibility and disability inclusion: UNICEF UK is now signing up as a disability-confident employer. We have embedded disability equity into our recruitment process, guaranteeing interviews for disabled candidates who meet minimum criteria and making sure that appropriate adjustments can be made at every step of the recruitment process. We also conducted a disability audit of our building and audited our website to ensure we meet the required accessibility standards. We have additionally partnered with Leonard Cheshire on launching an apprenticeship scheme for 2024.
- Inclusive talent and culture: We continued to support our Colleague Networks to celebrate and raise awareness of different cultures throughout the year. We also put on open sessions for colleagues to share and reflect on their experiences of ongoing external world events.
- Inclusive design: We supported each team across the organisation to continue to develop and deliver their own inclusion action plans, identifying ways to enhance inclusion within every part of UNICEF UK. As part of this process, every team also identified an inclusion champion, who attend regular meetings together to share best practice and receive ongoing support from our EDI team.
For more information on our inclusion and diversity commitment click here.
