Empower Learners for the Age of AI conference

The great unlearning: notes on the Empower Learners for the Age of AI conference

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is forcing a reckoning not just in our schools, but in how we solve the world’s most complex problems.  When ChatGPT exploded into public consciousness, the immediate fear that rippled through our institutions was singular: the corruption of process. The specter of students, professionals, and even leaders outsourcing their intellectual labor to a machine seemed to threaten the very foundation of competence and accountability. In response, a predictable arsenal was deployed: detection software, outright bans, and policies hastily drafted to contain the threat. Three years later, a more profound and unsettling truth is emerging. The Empowering Learners AI 2025 global conference (7-10 October 2025) was a fascinating location to observe how academics – albeit mostly white men from the Global North centers that concentrate resources for research – are navigating these troubled waters. The impacts of AI in education matter because, as the OECD’s Stefan Vincent-Lancrin explained: “performance in education …

Pour retrouver les enfants congolais non vaccinés, il est question des fumoirs à poisson et du dialogue inter-religieux

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Au deuxième jour de leurs travaux en direct, les professionnels de la santé congolais sont passés de la découverte à l’exploration des causes profondes qui laissent des centaines de milliers d’enfants exposés aux maladies évitables par la vaccination. Ils découvrent que les racines du problème sont souvent là où personne ne les attend: dans l’économie de la pêche, le dialogue avec les églises ou la gestion des camps de déplacés. Lire également: En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé Les analyses, plus fines, révèlent des leviers d’action insoupçonnés, démontrant la puissance d’une méthode qui transforme les soignants en stratèges. « La séance d’hier, c’était une séance de découverte, mais aujourd’hui, c’était une séance d’exploration. Explorer, c’est aller en profondeur. Il faut sonder ». Ces mots de Fidèle Tshibanda Mulangu, un participant congolais, résument la bascule …

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

Reda SadkiGlobal health

KINSHASA et LUMUMBASHI, le 7 octobre 2025 (La Fondation Apprendre Genève) – « Ces jeunes filles qui ont des grossesses indésirables, quand elles mettent au monde, elles ont tendance à laisser les enfants livrés à eux-mêmes », explique Marguerite Bosita, coordonnatrice d’une organisation non gouvernementale à Kinshasa. « Ce manque d’informations sur les questions liées à la vaccination se pose encore plus, car ces enfants grandissent exposés à des difficultés de santé ». Sa voix, émanant d’une mission de terrain dans la province du Kongo Central, s’est jointe à des centaines d’autres ce 7 octobre 2025. Il s’agissait de la deuxième journée d’un exercice d’apprentissage par les pairs de 16 jours visant à identifier et à atteindre les enfants dits « zéro dose » en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Ce sont ces centaines de milliers de nourrissons qui n’ont reçu aucun vaccin pour les protéger de nombreuses maladies. Pour …

How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children

How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children

Reda SadkiGlobal health

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 working with parents of children in crisis,” Irina explained during a recent video call with professionals across Europe supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. That call was the first annual meeting of an entirely volunteer-driven network of practitioners – some working within kilometres of active combat – who teach each other how to better support children. This network emerged from an innovative certificate peer learning programme supported by the European Union’s EU4Health programme, developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). …

Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice

The practitioner as catalyst: How a global learning community is turning frontline experience into action on health inequity

Reda SadkiGlobal health

“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. They also spoke to the very origin of the event itself. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice was created because thousands of health workers like Dr. Ishaku joined a global dialogue about equity and demanded a new kind of learning—one that moved beyond theory to provide practical tools for action. This inaugural session on 9 September 2025, called “Discovery Day,” was a direct answer to that call. It was not a lecture, but a three-hour, high-intensity workshop where the participants’ own experiences of inequity became the curriculum. …

Remembering Joseph Ngugi

From Murang’a to the world: remembering Joseph Ngugi, champion of peer learning for community health

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

“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 those most in need—and his deep awareness of those still unreached—characterized not only his career as a senior community health officer and public health specialist in Kenya’s Murang’a County, but also his extraordinary five-year journey through the Geneva Learning Foundation’s most rigorous learning programmes. It was the morning of the first day of August, 2025. The message from his daughter was simple and devastating: “Hello this is Wanjiru Mbari Ngugi’s Daughter. I am the one currently with his phone. This is to inform you that Dad passed away this morning.” Joseph’s passing represents more than …

Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries

Reda SadkiGlobal health

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 course will launch on 11 August 2025. Two years ago today, nearly 5,000 health professionals from across the developing world gathered online for an unprecedented conversation. They shared something most climate scientists had never heard: detailed, firsthand accounts of how rising temperatures, extreme weather, and environmental changes were already devastating the health of their communities. The stories were urgent and specific. A nurse in Ghana described managing surges of malaria after unprecedented flooding. A community health worker in Bangladesh explained how cholera outbreaks followed every major storm. A pharmacist in Nigeria watched children suffer malnutrition …

WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action

Reda SadkiGlobal health

After the World Health Assembly’s adoption of ambitious global plan of action for climate and health, global and country stakeholders are meeting in Brasilia for the Global Conference on Climate and Health, ahead of COP30. Three critical observations emerged that illuminate why conventional global health approaches may be structurally inadequate for the challenges resulting from climate change impacts on health. These observations carry particular significance for global health leaders who now possess a WHA-approved strategy and action plan, but lack proven mechanisms for rapid, community-led implementation in the face of an unprecedented set of challenges. They also matter for major funders whose substantial investments in policy and research have yet to be matched by commensurate support for the communities and health workers who will be the ones to translate better science and policy into action. Signal 1: When funding disappears and demand explodes Seventy percent of global health funding vanished, …

What is the Impact Accelerator

What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Imagine a social worker in Ukraine supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis. Thousands of kilometers away, a radiation specialist in Japan is trying to find effective ways to communicate with local communities. In Nigeria, a health worker is tackling how to increase immunization coverage in their remote village. These professionals face very different challenges in very different places. Yet when they joined their first “Impact Accelerator”, something remarkable happened. They all found a way forward. They all made real progress. They all discovered they are not alone. The Impact Accelerator is a simple, practical method developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation that helps professionals turn intent into action, results, and outcomes. It has worked equally well in every country where it has been tried. It has helped people – whatever their knowledge domain or context – strengthen action and accelerate progress to improve health outcomes. Each time, in each …

20250717.PFA Accelerator article

PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine

Reda SadkiGlobal health

In the PFA Accelerator, practitioners supporting children are teaching each other what works. Every Friday, more than 240 education, social work, and health professionals across Ukraine and Europe file reports on the same question: What happened when you tried to help a child this week? Their answers – grounded in their daily work – are creating new insights into how Psychological First Aid (“PFA”) works in active conflict zones, displacement centers, and communities hosting Ukrainian families. These practitioners implement practical actions with children each week, then share what they learn with colleagues from all over Europe who face similar challenges. The tracking reveals stark patterns. More than half work with children showing anxiety, fear, and stress responses triggered by air raids, family separation, or displacement. Another 42% focus on children struggling to connect with others in unfamiliar places—Ukrainian teenagers isolated in Polish schools, families in Croatian refugee centers, children moved …