Blog
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Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health: from Algiers to Acre
I sat in a conference hall in Rio Branco, Acre State, Brazil. My mind was in a sanatorium of Algiers, Algeria. This was where my mother was sent as a girl. They told her she got tuberculosis because she was an “indigène musulman”. In 1938, the year of my mother’s birth and after over a…
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Gender in emergencies: a new peer learning programme from The Geneva Learning Foundation
This is a critical moment for work on gender in emergencies. Across the humanitarian sector, we are witnessing a coordinated backlash. Decades of progress are threatened by targeted funding cuts, the erasure of essential research and tools, and a political climate that seeks to silence our work. Many dedicated practitioners feel isolated and that their work…
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The crisis in scientific publishing: from AI fraud to epistemic justice
There is a crisis in scientific publishing. Science is haunted. In early 2024, one major publisher retracted hundreds of scientific papers. Most were not the work of hurried researchers, but of ghosts—digital phantoms generated by artificial intelligence. Featuring nonsensical diagrams and fabricated data, they had sailed through the gates of peer review. This spectre of…
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Against chocolate-covered broccoli: text-based alternatives to expensive multimedia content
The great multimedia content deception Learning teams spend millions on dressing up content with multimedia. The premise is always the same: better graphics equal better learning. The evidence tells a different story. The focus on the presentation and transmission of content represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how learning actually works in our complex world. Multimedia…
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Richard Mayer’s research on multimedia for learning actually proves text works better
Educational technology professionals cite Richard Mayer’s 2008 study more than any other research on multimedia instruction. They are citing the wrong conclusion. Mayer did not prove multimedia enhances learning. He proved multimedia creates cognitive problems requiring ten different workarounds – and accidentally built the case for text-based instruction. What Richard Mayer actually found Through hundreds…
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How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children
When military fathers started arriving at her centre in Bulgaria, sharing challenges they faced with their own children, Irina V. found herself drawing on lessons learned not from textbooks, but from conversations with fellow practitioners scattered across a war zone. “What I learned about providing psychological first aid (PFA) to children actually helped me in…
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From diagnosis to duty: health workers confront their own role in inequity
A thirteen-year-old girl in Nigeria, bitten by a snake, arrived at a hospital with her frantic family. The hospital demanded payment before administering the antivenom. The family could not afford it. The girl died. This was one of the stark stories shared by health professionals on September 10, 2025, during “Exploration Day,” the third day…
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The practitioner as catalyst: How a global learning community is turning frontline experience into action on health inequity
“In this phase of my life, I want to work directly with the communities to see what I can do,” said Dr. Sambo Godwin Ishaku, a public health leader from Nigeria with over two decades of experience. His words opened the second day of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s first-ever peer learning exercise on health equity.…
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From Murang’a to the world: remembering Joseph Ngugi, champion of peer learning for community health
“What keeps me going now is the excitement of the clients who receive the service and the sad faces of those clients who need the services and cannot get them.” Joseph Mbari Ngugi shared these words on May 30, 2023, capturing the profound empathy and dedication that defined his life’s work. This commitment to serving…
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Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries
GENEVA, Switzerland, 23 July 2025 (The Geneva Learning Foundation) –Today, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) announces the launch of “Learning to lead change on the frontline of climate change and health,” the inaugural course in a new certificate programme designed by and for professionals facing climate change impacts on health. Enrollment is now open. The…
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