UNICEF

Mission Statement

UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.

UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children's rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children.

UNICEF insists that the survival, protection and development of children are universal development imperatives that are integral to human progress.

UNICEF mobilizes political will and material resources to help countries, particularly developing countries, ensure a "first call for children" and to build their capacity to form appropriate policies and deliver services for children and their families.

UNICEF is committed to ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children – victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, all forms of violence and exploitation, and those with disabilities.

UNICEF responds in emergencies to protect the rights of children. In coordination with United Nations partners and humanitarian agencies, UNICEF makes its unique facilities for rapid response available to its partners to relieve the suffering of children and those who provide their care.

UNICEF is non-partisan and its cooperation is free of discrimination. In everything it does, the most disadvantaged children and the countries in greatest need have priority.

UNICEF aims, through its country programmes, to promote the equal rights of women and girls and to support their full participation in the political, social and economic development of their communities.

UNICEF works with all its partners towards the attainment of the sustainable human development goals adopted by the world community and the realization of the vision of peace and social progress enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

UNICEF Vision

А world that upholds the rights of all children and helps every child thrive.

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories, helping to save and meaningfully improve the lives of children globally — focusing on the most vulnerable.

UNICEF Core Values

UNICEF is driven by five core values: care, respect, integrity, trust and accountability. A range of initiatives has been established to ensure these values form the basis of UNICEF operations and guide the world’s leading organization for children and young people.

Team lead oversees the Education programme area and implementation of digital learning initiatives of UNICEF Mongolia. Team lead is also in charge of project management via assuring the integrity of tendering and selection process, oversight of project implementation and releasing the budget. Furthermore, Team lead liaise with relevant government counterparts, civil society organizations, donors and international organizations.     

We have already introduced number of digital learning solutions and have been steadily scaling them up for the past 2 years. Although, survey from the users have provided positive feedbacks in the past few years, we would like to have more detailed evidence and report. Thus, assessing the effectiveness of our solution have become a priority of our programme and foundation for future undertaking. Our Education team comprise of 5 specialists and we are confident to Host the LEAP Project.  

Leveraging technology to make learning fun and natural

Shortly after schools and kindergartens closed in January 2020 due to a COVID-19 outbreak in neighboring country, the Government of Mongolia swiftly responded by transforming all levels of classroom teaching into televised lessons. This was the first substantial move towards distance learning within the general education sector; however, many other vital aspects of the distance learning environment were still absent.

Following the nationwide implementation of distance education modality, UNICEF has carried out a number of studies to analyze the effectiveness of the government’s response and to identify the critical deprivations. For instance, assessment on the tele-lessons have provided some interesting highlights that shows 21 percent of children did not watch tele-lessons.
Out of which: 5% did not have the necessary equipment to take part in the lessons, 16% had the necessary equipment but did not actually participate in the lessons. 

When students were asked to compare tele-lesson teaching with classroom teaching, 39% said tele-lesson teaching was not good, 34.7% said they were similar.

As per UNESCO report of 2021, the remote learning strategy revealed it may not have been as effective as initially hoped. Supporting and motivating children’s participation was rated lowest at less than 60 percent. Henceforth, the study findings point to the need of highlight the need of learner-centered digital learning content that is both interactive and engaging for children.

Based on the aforementioned findings and with the funding support of UN Multi-Partner Trust Fund, UNICEF has led a UN joint project in partnership with UNESCO and UNFPA. Main intervention of the UN joint project focused on introducing digital learning contents designed to support the existing tele-lessons through immersive and interactive experiences for children.

These contents transform the traditional learning objectives of a classroom teaching into a 2D cartoon animation where each content starts with a unique plot-driven story that leads to a problem-solving activity which the learner must partake in and be part of the learning process.

Total of 164 exemplary interactive contents have been developed and 45 more are currently in the pipeline. The ready contents are made available on Medle.mn, which is the official open educational resource repository of the Ministry of Education and Science of Mongolia (MoES).

Furthermore, to ensure equitable and inclusive access, the contents were made available in ethnic minority languages of Kazakh and Tuvan, sign
language interpretation option and made appropriate for visually impaired user-friendly format. This unique approach of reimagining digital learning
content for children has proven itself as highly effective for its target audience, as shown by the initial reactions and feedbacks of the children.
According to a rapid assessment survey carried out by MoES, more than 94 percent of 268 teachers had evaluated that interactive contents were age appropriate and interesting, supports creativity and meets the learning needs of children.

Within the first year of publishing the contents on Medle.mn, it has recorded a total of 450,000 visit count from the public. Thanks to the funding support of Maßvoll Stiftung, under the aegis of the Fondation de Luxembourg,
UNICEF is further expanding the digital learning contents.

To date we have carried out simple Formative research, interviews and surveys from parents, teachers and children. These were done by online and in person.

According to a rapid assessment survey carried out by MoES, more than 94 percent of 268 teachers had evaluated that interactive contents were age appropriate and interesting, supports creativity and meets the learning needs of children. 

These results were merely a positive tap on the shoulder indicating that we are heading the right direction and that there are limitless possibilities of what digital learning technologies could do to transform education.  

We have adequate number of contents as well as base number of audiences. To move forward with the scaling up we would like to base the improvements and implementation on more solid evidence.

1. Provide solid evidence on the effectiveness of learning through fun.

2. What aspects of the digital learning solution can be improved.

3. And how do you make the digital learning solution viral.

We believe that summative research via quasi-experimental studies and randomized control studies would provide interesting data but we would also appreciate literature reviews on emerging trends and use of technology to make learning more natural and fun.  

The results of the LEAP Project would immensely support our scaling up and improvement process.

In the short term, we hope to have solid evidence to better the current digital learning solution to make learning fun. 

And in the long term, we hope to transform the way we see learning.