Impact amplification: partnering for change in a world in flux
The world has never promised children more. And yet, all too often, it delivers too little.
A quarter of the way through the 21st century, technological progress, medical breakthroughs, and record levels of global wealth should have transformed childhood everywhere.
Instead, nearly one billion children (almost half of the population of children) still live in multidimensional poverty – without reliable access to food, shelter, education, or protection. Another billion children are growing up in countries at extreme risk from the climate crisis. Every four minutes, a child is killed by violence. And as the world races forward, only one in four young people have the skills they need to thrive within it.
Decades of progress in child wellbeing are now under threat. Conflicts are intensifying, climate shocks are multiplying and aid is shrinking. Economic and political polarisation are fragmenting global solidarity. Generosity itself is becoming unequal and concentrated: in the past three years, two-thirds of UNICEF’s private donations have gone to just three emergencies, while UNICEF teams have responded to over 400 crises in more than 100 countries.
The result of all this is a tragically widening gap between what the world can achieve for children and what it chooses to do. That gap will close only when we strengthen the systems that shape children’s lives – health, education and protection – and the social fabrics that sustain them.
Impact amplification is our emerging approach to making this shift. This takes proven approaches and embeds them into public systems, scaling solutions through policy and finance, to ensure that every partnership, innovation and investment contributes to lasting, systemic change.
Defining impact: introducing MuST
What do we mean by impact? At UNICEF UK, we define it as meaningful change for children which is measurable, sustainable and transformative – or MuST.
Measurable impact begins with clarity. It means setting targets that can be tracked and verified, aligning results with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and grounding decisions in data. UNICEF is the custodian or co-custodian of nineteen SDG indicators – giving us both the responsibility and the ability to hold ourselves accountable to the world’s most recognised benchmarks for sustainable progress.
Sustainable impact takes root when change endures beyond the life of any single project. We know this happens when governments, communities and civil society co-own solutions, when programmes are woven into national plans and budgets, and when systems are strong enough to continue delivering after initial investments end. Sustainability is not just about maintaining funding – it is about building institutions, skills and confidence, including shaping local markets so that progress is locally led and nationally anchored, to achieve local and global outcomes.
Transformative impact goes deeper still. It alters the norms, power dynamics and assumptions that drive inequality and inequity. Transformation happens when children and young people are active participants in shaping their futures, when gender equality, disability inclusion and climate resilience are built in from the start, and when innovation enables us to see and solve problems differently. It is what happens when immediate interventions have generational benefits.
How to amplify impact
Impact amplification means embedding ideas and strengthening systems across institutions and sectors, which too often operate in silos. The first step is mapping the pathways through which services reach children and identify the bottlenecks that prevent progress and the positive deviants (or outliers) that generate uncommon results.
Bottlenecks might be health workers without supplies, a school without trained teachers or a protection service without data. Positive deviants might be community networks using mobile data to track disease outbreaks, parents’ groups collaborating with teachers on pupil nutrition and well-being or communities using cash transfers to support solar-powered mobile recharging points near water purification systems, serving both energy and clean water needs. Whatever the situation, the goal is the same: diagnose the weak links and bright spots, and build the bright spots up so that systems can deliver at scale.
Then it is about leveraging government budgets to ensure national priorities and allocations are directed towards children’s needs. UNICEF’s technical assistance in public financial management helps ministries track, allocate and report spending on child priorities. When countries invest their own funds, progress becomes both scalable and sustainable.
A third step is to influence policy and regulation. UNICEF convenes and supports coalitions that turn evidence into action, bringing together governments, UN bodies, civil society, academia and the private sector to shape policies that work for children, leading to positive multiplier effects. Whether reforming education laws, setting up child-focused social protection systems or embedding child rights into climate policy, the objective is to make systemic change the default, not the exception.
Finally, we align programmes with the SDGs for children, connecting local action to global ambition. Every programme contributes to collective learning – sharing insights across countries, scaling what works and inspiring partners to invest in impact rather than just delivering activities.
The way forward: new frontiers
The next chapter of impact will be defined by our ability to connect culture, technical expertise, finance and storytelling in novel ways.
UNICEF UK is working towards the following four aspects of impact that reflect our integrated approach, which span technical, cultural, operational and engagement dimensions.
- Impact intelligence: using real-time data, analytics and insight to guide decision making and sharpen accountability.
- Impact-driven finance: designing funding models which reward outcomes and leverage private and philanthropic capital for systemic results.
- Impact-driven design and delivery: embedding systems thinking, co-creation and human-centred design in everything we do.
- Impact-driven storytelling: bringing evidence to life through authentic human stories that connect people to purpose.
The below framework can be used to map the impact portfolio by organisations across the sector:
| Operational | Engagement | |
| Technical | Impact Intelligence Data, tools, and methods for impact assessment and tracking | Impact-Driven Finance Innovative funding models grounded in measurable outcomes |
| Cultural | Impact-Driven Design & Delivery Mindsets and approaches for community-led, empowering, adaptive, systemic programmes and policies | Impact-Driven Storytelling Narratives and content that build emotional connection around impact and systems change and drive engagement and action |
Impact Amp, UNICEF UK’s new digital platform, integrates the four key impact aspects to ensure funded programmes align with the SDGs and global trends for children. Using the MuST framework, it enables evidence-based sustainable change, and aims for sector-wide adoption through collaboration and continuous refinement, driving collective impact for children.
The impact we want to achieve is clear. By 2029, UNICEF’s collective ambition is to ensure that at least 500 million children are healthy and well-nourished, 350 million more children and young people are learning, skilled and protected from violence, 100 million fewer children live in multidimensional poverty and 500 million are better protected from the effects of climate, disaster and environmental risks. These are not just numbers; they are lives, futures and possibilities.
Impact amplification is the mindset that will enable us to reach these results. It recognises that real progress for children is inseparable from the systems that support them, and the greatest results come when we act with shared purpose, humility and ambition.
