About Us
The Data for Children Collaborative is a specialist unit at The University of Edinburgh, hosted by the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
What we do
We build innovative ways to enable impactful cross-sector collaborations and to deliver data-driven projects responsibly.
Evolving from a unique partnership with UNICEF, the Scottish Government and the University of Edinburgh’s Data Driven Innovation Programme, with an initial three-year funded period, the Data for Children Collaborative has advanced to becoming a specialist unit, now working with a range of collaborators. We continue to deliver projects with our original partners, UNICEF and the Scottish Government, and seek to extend our range of challenge owners to broaden our impact.
In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, where data is a driving force, and evidence is vital to decision making, we want to use data responsibly to produce demand-driven insights for real-world impact on the world’s children. Our goal is to leverage the right data and the right expertise from our ever-growing community in order to address existing problems for children using innovative data and data science techniques.
Since our inception in September 2019, we have developed a catalogue of innovative systematic approaches that now see us bringing together the appropriate data, skills and expertise to answer a challenge question from our partners, across a number of child-centric themes.
Our Strategy
We have a Theory of Change which sets the structure for our strategic planning and allows us to evaluate our complex initiatives. It is a key bridging tool to visually and narratively describe how impact will be achieved by breaking down our change activities step-by-step. It maps the linkage between our activities, outcomes, and consequent impact and acts as a framework for all of our operational activities.
Read our dictionary entrance on: What we mean when we talk about theory of change.
Today, children are at risk from massive issues ranging from climate change to conflict, from epidemics and disease to poverty and deprivation. The world’s complex socio-economic problems affecting children cannot be tackled by a single organisation alone.
Collaborative data-driven solutions are critical to support those organisations that are working tirelessly to help children survive and thrive.
Download our Strategic Plan
Our Annual Reports
Our annual report is a chance to reflect on our progress, what we’ve learned and, most importantly, how we use data to improve children’s outcomes. We are excited to share some of the highlights, showing how our work continues to create real-world impact.
