Le Lac Tchad

Why an open-source manifesto for global health?

Reda Sadki Global health, Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

Lire la version française: Pourquoi un manifeste open-source pour la santé globale? The global immunization community is now focused on “the big catch-up”, dealing with recovery of immunization services from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, as countries – and immunization staff on the frontlines – work toward the goals of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030). At the Seventy-Fourth World Health Assembly, the Director General of the World Health Organization had called for “a broad social movement for immunization that will ensure that immunization remains high on global and regional health agendas and help to generate a groundswell of support or social movement for immunization”. A Movement is larger than any one individual or organization. The Geneva Learning Foundation is one of many working to support this Movement. In March 2022, we launched a call for immunization staff at all levels of the health system to connect across boundaries of geography …

Le Lac Tchad

Pourquoi un manifeste open-source pour la santé globale?

Reda Sadki Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

Read this in English: Why an open-source manifesto for global health? La communauté mondiale de la vaccination se concentre désormais sur le « grand rattrapage », en priorisant le rétablissement des services de vaccination suite aux conséquences de la pandémie de COVID-19, alors que les pays—et le personnel de la vaccination en première ligne—s’efforcent d’atteindre les objectifs du Programme pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030 (IA2030). Lors de la soixante-quatorzième Assemblée mondiale de la santé, le directeur général de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé avait lancé un appel en faveur d’un « vaste mouvement social pour la vaccination qui veillera à ce que la vaccination reste une priorité dans les programmes de santé internationaux et régionaux et contribuera à susciter une vague de soutien ou un mouvement social en faveur de la vaccination ». Un mouvement est plus grand qu’un seul pays ou une seule organisation. La Fondation Apprendre Genève est l’une des nombreuses …

Credible knowers

Credible knowers

Reda Sadki Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation, Thinking aloud

“Some individuals are acknowledged as credible knowers within global health, while the knowledge held by others may be given less credibility.” – (Himani Bhakuni and Seye Abimbola in The Lancet, 2021) “Immunization Agenda 2030” or “IA2030” is a strategy that was unanimously adopted at the World Health Assembly in 2020. The global community that funds and supports vaccination globally is now exploring what it needs to do differently to transform the Agenda’s goal of saving 50 million lives by the end of the decade into reality. Last year, over 10,000 national and sub-national health staff from 99 countries pledged to achieve this goal when they joined the Geneva Learning Foundation’s first IA2030 learning and action research programme. Discover what we learned in Year 1… Learn more about the Foundation’s platform and network… In global health, personal experience is assumed to be anecdotal, the lowest form of evidence. We are learning, as one …

What is the Geneva Learning Foundation and what do we do?

Reda Sadki The Geneva Learning Foundation

What we do and how we do it have both changed rapidly since we launched the Impact Accelerator, the key component Geneva Learning Foundation’s learning-to-action pathway. We catalyze large scale peer networks of frontline actors facing critical threats to our societies.  To learn more about the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), download our brochure, listen to our podcast, view our latest livestreams, subscribe to our insights, and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Or introduce yourself to our Partnerships team.

How do we shift our capacity to embrace a volatile, complex world?

Reda Sadki Thinking aloud

This week, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is Devex’s “Presenting Partner”. We are proud to be sharing with Devex’s 170,000 NewsWire subscribers the remarkable progress and the results, outcomes, and impact we have achieved since the pandemic hit. Discover how we connect people, organizations, and communities to achieve collective impact better and faster… Get in touch… We stand ready to support any organization or network that needs to mobilize people at scale in support of meaningful change. We are seeking partners that share our yearning for transformation, and that can bring their challenges, resources, and capabilities to make this yearning a reality. We are actively fundraising to develop our global platform so we can support more partners tackling ‘wicked’ problems. The need for change is evident. Is your organization rethinking how it contributes to achieving global goals? Humanitarian INGOs headquartered in Geneva, London, or Washington are striving to “localize aid”. …

Social network and citation network in the COVID-19 Peer Hub

Disseminating rapid learning about COVID-19 vaccine introduction

Reda Sadki Global health, Global health, Learning strategy

In July 2019, barely six months before the pandemic, we worked with alumni of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s immunization programme to build the Impact Accelerator in 86 countries. This global community of action for national and sub-national immunization staff pledged, following completion of one of the Foundation’s courses, to support each other in other to achieve impact. Closing the loop from learning to impact produced startling results, accelerating the rate at which locally-resourced projects were implemented and fostering new forms of collaborative leadership. Alumni launched what immediately became the largest network of immunization managers in the world. Then the pandemic dramatically raised the stakes: at least 80 million children under one were placed at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, measles and polio as COVID-19 disrupted immunization service as worldwide. Alumni were amongst the first in their countries to respond, leveraging the power of being connected to each other …

Solidarity across public health and medicine silos during a pandemic

Reda Sadki Education business models, Global health, Global health, Learning strategy

We are launching a new Scholar programme about environmental threats to health, with an initial focus on radiation. (I mapped out what this might look like in 2017.) As part of the launch, we are enlisting support of immunization colleagues. Our immunization programme is our largest and most advanced programme, and still growing fast since its inception in 2016. At The Geneva Learning Foundation, we have spent 5 years pouring mind, body, and soul into building what has become the largest digital platform for national and sub-national immunization leaders. Along the way, we discovered that it is not only about scale. Social Network Analysis (SNA) by colleagues Sasha Poquet and Vitomir Kovanovic at the Centre for Complexity and Change in Learning is now helping us to understand the power in the relationships not just one-to-many but many-to-many across the network. Yes, there is a linkage as most vaccines are for …

Seventh Epidemiological Training Workshop for Biologists Draws 48 Participants from Outside Organizations

New learning for radiation emergency medical preparedness and assistance

Reda Sadki Events, Presentations

My presentation for the Geneva Learning Foundation at the 15th meeting of the WHO Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network (REMPAN), World Health Organization, Geneva – 3-5 July 2017. Featured image: Participants of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation’s (RERF) Seventh Epidemiological Training Workshop for Biologists. The objective of the RERF is to conduct research and studies for peaceful purposes on medical effects of radiation and associated diseases in humans, with a view to contributing to maintenance of the health and welfare of the atomic bomb (A-bomb) survivors and to enhancement of the health of all humankind.

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

Reda Sadki Global 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 …

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

Tower of Babel

Reda Sadki #DigitalScholar

What happens when a fledgling, start-up foundation convenes learning leaders from all over the world to explore digital learning? Over 800 participants from 103 countries have joined the Geneva Learning Foundation’s #DigitalScholar course developed in conjunction with the University of Illinois College of Education and Learning Strategies International. The course officially launches on Monday. Yet participants  joining the online community have begun introducing themselves and, in the process, are already tackling challenging questions on the pedagogy, content, and economics of education and its digital transformation. “Look at all the people here!” exclaimed one Digital Scholar. And, yes, we are from everywhere. You could start from “cloudy England”, a hop-and-a-skip away from “rainy Amsterdam” and then keep travelling, stopping in any of the 103 countries where participants live. You might end up in the “paradise island” of Mauritius, “sunny but chilly” Sidney, or “hot and humid” Puerto Rico. Think about it. When Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis …