Technology to Help Transform Children’s Lives

UNICEF and ARM have announced a multi-year partnership to accelerate the development of new technologies to overcome the barriers that prevent millions of families from accessing basic health, education and support services. The partnership’s first action is to collaborate with global product strategy and design firm frog on a ‘Wearables for Good’ challenge to generate ideas for new and innovative devices that tackle maternal and child health needs in emerging economies.

The partnership will focus on enabling UNICEF to provide faster and more comprehensive help to children coping with the effects of mass urbanization and increased social and economic divides. Together, UNICEF and ARM will use their influence to encourage the tech sector to innovate for impact.

Initial deliverables in the multi-year partnership include:

* UNICEF and ARM have partnered with frog to launch the ‘Wearables for Good’ design challenge. The challenge asks: Could wearable and sensor technology be the next mobile revolution? Running over six months, the challenge invites developers, designers, community partners and problem-solvers to design a wearable device that offers a cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable solution to pressing maternal, newborn or child health problems.  

* ARM will work alongside UNICEF’s network of Innovation Labs and country offices to identify and scale up pilot projects that demonstrate the potential to be used at a national level. Over the next year, UNICEF and ARM will uncover the most impactful solutions being used or in trials across the UNICEF network and invest to deliver them wherever they are needed.

* Longer term, the UNICEF/ARM partnership will conduct research to evaluate and promote market opportunities in developing countries. With the findings, UNICEF and ARM will outline the business case for investing in solutions for mobile financial services, identity, transportation, learning and wearable/sensor technology. The joint goal is to build momentum for globally co-created and scalable technologies that attract commercial investment.

“We need to innovate with social purpose in order to overcome the barriers of time, distance and lack of information that prevent millions of children from surviving and realizing their potential,” said Erica Kochi, Co-lead, UNICEF Innovation. “By working together with ARM we improve our ability to develop new technologies that impact children and help them grow up healthy, educated and able to positively contribute to their families, communities and wider economies.”

“Technology should be used to create opportunity for all; improving child health, education and prospects, and access to it should not be governed by economic status or geography,” said Simon Segars, CEO, ARM. “We have spent 25 years enabling life-changing technologies and together with UNICEF’s innovation experts we believe this partnership can deliver a positive social impact for children all-around the world.”

Today’s partnership announcement has evolved from a growing understanding between UNICEF and ARM that technology can have a defining impact on children’s lives. With that shared view, UNICEF and ARM aim to drive sector-wide change, creating an ecosystem of technology companies that explore the potential social impact of new technologies they develop.