Why Innovate?

In 2015, innovation is vital to the state of the world's children. Challenges have never been larger, or coming faster – urbanization, climate change, lack of employment opportunities, broken education systems, increased disparities and digital divides.

 

However, a new global infrastructure is being created that has potential to address these challenges. This is an infrastructure of openness, of collaboration across borders, of exploration, and of innovation for equity.

 

We see, in 135 countries around the world, young people pushing the boundaries of the possible and creating a future they want – and the future is appearing in the places that UNICEF works before it happens in the "global north."

 

From innovations in mobile money in Kenya, to birth registration in Nigeria, to new types of learning and teaching in Argentina – the connected world that we live in is generating and sharing opportunities in a fundamentally different way in 2015 than it ever has before.

Access to information is fundamental to innovation for equity. The biggest change that we need to foster, and that is happening already in some places, is the push to get connectivity (access to information, opportunity, and choice) to the world's most marginalized populations. This fundamentally underlies a great deal of the innovation agenda – because without access to information and connectivity young people are stifled and put at risk.