UNICEF’s Agora platform: a decade of empowering minds, changing lives

UNICEF, The United Nations Children’s Fund, works in the world’s toughest places to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents – and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere. Across more than 190 countries and territories, we do whatever it takes to help children survive, thrive and fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

The Challenge

Our ability to effectively lead, manage, and develop our people has never been more critical to ensure we retain and grow a vital workforce to execute our mandate to protect children’s rights in an ever-changing world.

One of our primary challenges has been reaching a diverse global workforce across different regions: We aim to ensure accessibility to learning initiatives that respond to varied needs, including self-paced learning, while maintaining our capability to monitor participation, completion, and results for accountability.

Additionally, a fast-changing global context challenges UNICEF to remain adaptable while constantly evolving to deliver results for children. Therefore, we need a learning platform that can provide a high-quality employee experience to all people throughout their careers at UNICEF and key partners who must perform at their best.

The Solution

Totara Partner Catalyst has a long standing relationship with UNICEF working in partnership since 2013. During this time Catalyst has provided a fully hosted and managed solution on AWS for UNICEF. The project has included a highly customised Totara platform, Agora, for UNICEF staff, consultants and guest users.

Agora is UNICEF’s Totara-based learning management system implemented in 2014. It intends to foster a culture of continuous learning and professional development while providing reliable data for strategic decision-making. Over the past 10 years, UNICEF has significantly invested in the custom development of the tool to fit its strategic purposes.

UNICEF is developing a skills inventory of current and future skills to identify gaps and adopt proactive planning to recognize the skills needed now and in the future. We have augmented and transformed our LMS catalogue so that its topics match identified skills, and we tagged assets in our learning offer accordingly. This enables staff and managers to quickly identify the most relevant learning solutions for their skill gaps, aligning with the organization’s strategic objectives and mission.

This is all recorded in the individual staff member’s development plan, a functionality UNICEF has been using strategically and connected to performance management workflows. Adding the development plan to the performance evaluation scheme has significantly increased staff efficiency and contributed to impactful career planning.

Furthermore, our platform boasts integration with industry-leading solutions such as LinkedIn Learning and Gamoteca integrations, popular solutions because of their currency and originality. PageUp, SAP, and Azure integrations allow account creation at onboarding to be automated, and so is deactivation at offboarding.

Not only is UNICEF investing in developing its 23,000-strong personnel, but it has also opened Agora to partners to enhance their competencies to support children and youth. To date, we have over 1 million registrations in Agora: over 300,000 of which are active (logged in at least once over the past 12 months), taking our courses on humanitarian and development-related topics. Agora is the sole offering within the UN System available to the public at no cost.

The Result

The Agora platform stands as a versatile and inclusive hub, catering to diverse learner needs while its open to all users. We have taken proactive steps to enhance engagement and participation by implementing site translations in French and Spanish offering courses in 26 languages, thereby fostering the involvement of our global workforce and extending our reach beyond organizational boundaries. Agora embodies our commitment to inclusivity and the UN Principle of “Leave No One Behind.”

In 2023 we embarked on a comprehensive accessibility audit of the platform, addressing all identified aspects to ensure a seamless user experience for individuals utilizing screen readers or facing other accessibility challenges. This initiative aligns closely with the UN’s and UNICEF’s Disability Inclusion Strategies, reaffirming our dedication to fostering an environment where every individual can thrive.

We have introduced a new compliance training program focused on disability inclusion, further reinforcing our commitment to creating a truly accessible and equitable learning environment for all.

UNICEF onboarding courses compliance is close to 100% in most courses, due to the ease of availability of courses and their close relation to the mandate, which staff are sworn for as United Nations Civil Servants. Going beyond our organizational confines, UNICEF offer their mandatory training courses to all Agora learners believing in making these contents available thus contributing to a better survival chances for children.

Their flagship course mandatory for staff and partners of all UN agencies is the “Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” e-course that they offer at no cost in 17 different languages. UNICEF and the UN has zero tolerance in this regard. To date they have a total of 245,111 completions of this course just in Agora. UNICEF is closely monitoring any disciplinary actions taken in this regard as well as observing an increase in the reporting of such cases.

Not only does Agora serve individual agencies but also hosts courses from other UN bodies as tenants, granting access through themed URLs to amplify their effectiveness in achieving their missions. Seamless system integrations using single sign-on further enhance user experience and facilitate easier reporting.

In summary, many functionalities now integral to Totara 17 were originally custom-developed, underscoring our commitment to innovation and excellence in learning and development.