Global Reach, Local Impact: UNICEF Delivering for Every Child
UNICEF's Supply Division is a great example of how UNICEF is continuously innovating to increase efficiency and maximize impact for children. More flexible funding from donors is required to sustain this important work. Learn more.
UNICEF: a world leader in humanitarian emergency response
UNICEF operates the world’s largest humanitarian logistics and supply center in the world. That supply powerhouse enables UNICEF to respond to emergencies quickly and effectively — saving lives.
A big part of this operation means strengthening and leveraging the power of public supply chains, and leaning into partnerships to ensure the response is appropriate and that children’s specific needs are being met.
Defining those needs is a critical step toward creating lasting change.
In 2023, UNICEF procured over $5.2 billion in supplies and services for children in 162 countries and areas — including more than $893 million in emergency supplies to children in 81 countries, including many hard-to-reach locations. The organization’s humanitarian action plan for 2025 aims to support 109 million children living through complex humanitarian crises.
UNICEF is funded entirely through voluntary contributions from both public and private sector donors, including governments, civil society organizations, corporations and private individuals. As competition for humanitarian financing grows — fueled by drastic cuts in foreign aid — private sector supporters can help fill funding gaps.
Why UNICEF? A track record of going the extra mile for children in crisis
Addressing humanitarian needs requires more than the logistics of delivering aid. It demands innovative, people-centered solutions that uphold dignity. It means partnering at every level, and investing in local organizations and economies as part of the response.
UNICEF’s interconnected network of global, regional and local supply chains is what enables UNICEF to go the extra mile — even in hard-to-reach places — to ensure vulnerable children have access to safe water and nutrition, vaccines and other essential medicines, education and protection.
Fragility is one of the greatest challenges to children’s rights. To safeguard those rights, UNICEF works to strengthen national supply chains to ensure equitable and timely access to those essential services and supplies. UNICEF’s technical expertise and comparative advantage touch upon many fields, driving long-term local ownership and sustainability.
Today, 65 countries across five regions are currently engaged in supply chain strengthening activities with the support of UNICEF. This innovative work creates the critical local capacity needed to enable a faster, more efficient and targeted humanitarian response in emergencies, leading to children receiving a higher quality of care and support.
Partnerships that drive innovation, efficiency and accountability: UNICEF ‘Kits That Fit’ and UNICARE
When it comes to the emergency supplies received, acceptability, appropriateness and choice are key. It's an issue when something is perceived to be ineffective. It's also a problem when social and cultural factors discourage people from asking for what they need.
But when there is an opportunity to choose specific items, when there are channels of communication for sharing preferences, then people are more likely to step forward to seek — and accept — the help they need. This in turn improves the effectiveness of the response and translates into better outcomes for the community overall.
The UNICEF Kits That Fit initiative, launched in 2023, is helping to ensure that the emergency kits that are distributed to communities are context appropriate and tailored to recipients' needs and wants. To achieve this, UNICEF and partners created mechanisms that empower people to communicate those needs and preferences at the start of their road to recovery. Kits are designed accordingly, with items sourced locally as much as possible.
Designing emergency kits based on user feedback and preferences
UNICEF and partners collect feedback data directly from children, families and communities through accessible and child-friendly digital and face-to-face platforms, including mobile apps. The feedback is then used to make improvements and ensure kits are fit for purpose.
Related: UNICEF Kits That Fit
The Kits That Fit feedback loop is an extension of UNICARE, a broader initiative by UNICEF to listen to — and act upon — the voices of people UNICEF serves, and to help other decision makers take appropriate action, by adapting their own programs or making organizational improvements, to drive better results for children. Focus groups, mobile phone text surveys, telephone hotlines and other channels are also used to ensure broad engagement.
The end result is higher accountability — not just to the children and families receiving the assistance, but to the partners supporting UNICEF’s lifesaving work.
Armed with an improved understanding of people’s priorities, UNICEF leverages its agile approach to procurement and supply chain management to deliver faster, more targeted aid. By procuring items from local manufacturers and other businesses, UNICEF is also helping to strengthen and revitalize local economies. Local vendors enjoy greater visibility, and UNICEF gains knowledge of local markets. Local businesses and organizations become part of the solution for people affected by crisis.
Scaling up supplies, saving lives — and securing futures
UNICEF’s ability to scale up supplies at any given moment is another factor that sets it apart as a leader uniquely capable of meeting the emergency needs of children in crisis.
It is this capacity that enabled UNICEF to send 350 trucks of aid into the Gaza Strip in one week — after 15 months of bombardment and a long-awaited ceasefire — to reach the needs of over 1 million children. UNICEF’s robust cold chain supply system and partnership with the World Health Organization halted a serious outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip in late 2024, when over half a million children under 10 years received vaccinations as part of UNICEF’S emergency polio vaccination campaign.
In South Sudan, UNICEF was able to overcome supply bottlenecks to scale the nutrition response by prepositioning supplies during the dry season and managing the supply pipeline for ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), ensuring it would be continuously available. That coupled with the implementation of a community-based approach to managing acute malnutrition has supported the broader national strategy to prevent and treat malnutrition, significantly increasing recovery rates.
In Somalia, UNICEF worked to digitalize the nutrition supply chain to reach more children suffering from malnutrition with effective aid. Digital solutions help prevent the diversion of aid, reducing risks and losses.
UNICEF’s plans to digitalize the severe wasting registry in Somalia mean that data can be directly linked to the supply chain, creating stronger reporting on consumption and stock data, leading to more timely availability of supplies to prevent severe wasting in children and save lives.
Flexible funding: the best way to drive impact, create lasting change for children
For more than seventy years, UNICEF has been the trusted partner for those who seek to save and change children’s lives. Voluntary contributions from donors don’t just fund programs; they also help drive innovation and overall system strengthening.
The support creates ripple effects that positively impact today’s generation of children and many generations to come; children receiving humanitarian aid today are the leaders, innovators, and change makers of tomorrow.
On average, 50 percent of contributions to UNICEF are restricted to a handful of crises. Flexible funding — donor support that is unearmarked to any specific country or program — helps UNICEF close gaps between identified needs and the resources required to meet them.
It's how UNICEF stays nimble, able to direct resources strategically, wherever and whenever they are needed most, for maximum impact.
Right now, the lives of the most vulnerable children hang in the balance as conflicts and crises jeopardize the care and protection that they deserve. Dependable, uninterrupted and effective foreign aid is critical to the well-being of millions of children. Please contact your members of Congress and urge them to support ongoing U.S. investments in foreign assistance.
This article is based on a report written by the UNICEF Humanitarian Funding Unit. Part of the Division of Private Fundraising and Partnerships (PFP), based in Geneva, HFU steers global efforts to maximize fundraising for humanitarian crises and sudden onset disasters.
HOW TO HELP
There are many ways to make a difference
War, famine, poverty, natural disasters — threats to the world's children keep coming. But UNICEF won't stop working to keep children healthy and safe.
UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories — more places than any other children's organization. UNICEF has the world's largest humanitarian warehouse and, when disaster strikes, can get supplies almost anywhere within 72 hours. Constantly innovating, always advocating for a better world for children, UNICEF works to ensure that every child can grow up healthy, educated, protected and respected.
Would you like to help give all children the opportunity to reach their full potential? There are many ways to get involved.
