By Ebrima Mbaye
Claim: UNICEF is offering free online courses with certificates for online learners worldwide. No enrollment fee.
Source: Opportunities circle (via Facebook)
Verdict: Misleading and a potential for online scam.
CLAIM
On July 18, 2025 at 12:59pm, the Facebook Page, Opportunities circle, which identifies as a Youth Organisation and claims to be “…the world’s #1 opportunities discovering platform for youth,” made the following post:
UNICEF Free Online Courses 2025 | Free Certificate
Check comments for link
Benefits:
- Self-paced courses, learn anytime from anywhere.
- No-cost enrollment and free certificate options.
- Suitable for professionals, volunteers, and students.
Enrollment: No deadline
The post is accompanied by a flyer with a flag bearing the UNICEF Logo, and provided the following link in the comments section for would be applicants: https://tinyurl.com/3nntcrjx which takes them to the official page of Opportunities Circle (which sometimes spells it Circle with a small/capital “c”/ “C”).
The post by Opportunities Circle, which has 360, 000 followers on Facebook, has generated more than 1,100 likes, 150 comments, and 330 shares by Facebook users. It has also been shared on WhatsApp platforms.
On it’s website, Opportunities Circle, offered some details about the courses and noted that they are offered through the UNICEF Agora platform and provided a supposed link (free online courses).
However, this link does not lead to UNICEF’s official training platform, AGORA, instead, it takes you to another publication on its website offering “MIT Free Online Courses 2025”.
A second link talking about the supposed free courses by UNICEF, which says “Therefore, everyone should sign up for UNICEF free online certificate courses” takes you to another page on its website which is about “Google Free Online Courses 2025 with Free Certificates.”
FACT-CHECK
According to our research, UNICEF operates an e-learning platform called Agora (https://agora.unicef.org/), which is used primarily for the capacity-building of UNICEF staff, humanitarian partners, and development practitioners.
An official of UNICEF Gambia, who does not want to be named because he doesn’t have the authority to speak on the issue at the time of our research, said that “while some courses on Agora are available to the general public, most are intended for professional or internal use, and not all offer free certificates”.
A thorough check on the UNICEF Agora platform confirms that while there are public-facing courses, “there is no official 2025 public campaign offering a broad range of free, self-paced courses with guaranteed free certificates for all.” Most certificates are tied to specific training modules intended for targeted audiences.
Additionally, the Opportunities Circle website does not provide direct links to UNICEF’s official learning portal. Instead, it compiles general training opportunities, some of which are outdated or not directly linked to UNICEF, thereby creating a misleading impression.
Under the publication about the free online courses purportedly offered by UNICEF, Opportunities Circle wrote in bold: Increase your chances of acceptance for the program by using our Expert Guidance. However, this link to the so-called expert guidance, when clicked, takes you to another page where users are charged US $10 every 20 minutes.
We contacted Opportunities Circle on its official email address (support@opportunitiescircle.com) listed on its Facebook Page about our findings, but got no response. This post will be updated as and when they offered a response.
On July 30, 2025, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, found Opportunities Circle’s Facebook page to have committed a number of violations against its Community Standards. Specific concerns raised include:
- Infringement of intellectual property rights
- Repeated reports for abusive content or behavior
- Advertising violations under Meta’s Business Policy
VERDICT
Based on our research, the claim that UNICEF is offering self-paced, no-cost online courses with free certificates for everyone in 2025 is MISLEADING and a potential for online scam. Individuals are encouraged to verify learning opportunities directly through UNICEF’s AGORA platform or trusted official channels.
