Peer learning outperforms technical assistance

The great technical assistance disruption: How peer networks outperform experts at a fraction of the cost

Reda SadkiWriting

“If health workers do not share their challenges and solutions, we are bound to fail.” This declaration from a participant in the Teach to Reach initiative facilitated by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) cuts to the heart of a crisis that has long plagued global health technical assistance: the persistent gap between what external experts provide and what practitioners actually need. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), TGLF’s Reda Sadki presented evidence of a quiet revolution taking place in how global health organizations approach capacity building and technical assistance. His research and practice demonstrate that digitally-enabled peer learning can overcome fundamental limitations that have constrained traditional models for decades. The implications challenge not just how we train health workers, but the entire infrastructure of expert-driven technical assistance that dominates global health. Why we resist learning from screens To understand why this revolution has …

New learning and leadership for front-line community health workers facing danger

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning design, Scholar Approach

This presentation was prepared for the second global meeting of the Health Care in Danger (HCiD) project in Geneva, Switzerland (17–18 May 2017). In October  2016, over 700 pre-hospital emergency workers from 70 countries signed up for the #Ambulance! initiative to “share experience and document situations of violence”. This initiative was led by Norwegian Red Cross and IFRC in partnership with the Geneva Learning Foundation, as part of the Health Care in Danger project. Over four weeks (equivalent to two days of learning time), participants documented 72 front-line incidents of violence and similar risks, and came up with practical approaches to dealing with such risks. This initiative builds on the Scholar Approach, developed by the University of Illinois College of Education, the Geneva Learning Foundation, and Learning Strategies International. In 2013, IFRC had piloted this approach to produce 105 case studies documenting learning in emergency operations. These are some of the questions which I address in …