Teach to Reach Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

You are not alone: Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

Global health

Today, The Geneva Learning Foundation launched a new set of “Teach to Reach Questions” focused on how health workers protect community health during extreme weather events. This initiative comes at a crucial time, as world leaders at COP29 discuss climate change’s mounting impacts on health. As climate change intensifies extreme weather events worldwide, health workers are often the first to respond when disasters strike their communities. Their experiences – whether facing floods, droughts, heatwaves, or storms – contain vital lessons that could help others prepare for and respond to similar challenges. Read the eyewitness report: From community to planet: Health professionals on the frontlines of climate change, Online. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660 Why ask health workers about floods, droughts, and heatwaves? “Traditional surveys often ask for general information or statistics,” explains Charlotte Mbuh of The Geneva Learning Foundation. “Teach to Reach Questions are different. We ask health workers to share …

Teach to Reach 11 Call for Partners

Why participate in Teach to Reach?

Global health

In global health, where challenges are as diverse as they are complex, we need new ways for health professionals to connect, learn, and drive change. Imagine a digital space where a nurse from rural Nigeria, a policymaker from India, and a WHO expert can share experiences, learn from each other, and collectively tackle global health challenges. That’s the essence of Teach to Reach. Welcome to Teach to Reach, a peer learning initiative launched in January 2021 by a collection of over 300 health professionals from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as they were getting ready to introduce COVID-19 vaccination. Four years later, the tenth edition of Teach to Reach on 20-21 June 2024 brought together an astounding 21,389 health professionals from over 70 countries. Discussion has expanded beyond immunization to include a range of challenges that matter for the survival and resilience of local communities. What makes this gathering extraordinary …

Climate change and health-Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

Global health

As world leaders gathered for the COP28 climate conference, the Geneva Learning Foundation called for the insights of health workers on the frontlines of climate and health to be heard amidst the global dialogue. Ahead of Teach to Reach 10, a new eyewitness report analyses 219 new insights shared by 122 health professionals – primarily those working in local communities across Africa, Asia and Latin America – to two critical questions: How is climate change affecting the health of the communities you serve right now? And what actions must world leaders take to help you protect the people in your care? (Teach to Reach is a regular peer learning event. The tenth edition on 20-21 June 2024 is expected to gather over 20,000 community-based health workers to share experience of climate change impacts on health. Request your invitation here.) Their answers paint a picture of the accelerating health crisis unfolding in the world’s most climate-vulnerable …

Rethinking Workplace Learning and Development

Learning-based complex work: how to reframe learning and development

About me, Global health, Interviews, Published articles, The Geneva Learning Foundation

The following is excerpted from Watkins, K.E. and Marsick, V.J., 2023. Chapter 4. Learning informally at work: Reframing learning and development. In Rethinking Workplace Learning and Development. Edward Elgar Publishing. This chapter’s final example illustrates the way in which organically arising IIL (informal and incidental learning) is paired with opportunities to build knowledge through a combination of structured education and informal learning by peers working in frequently complex circumstances. Reda Sadki, president of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), rethought L&D for immunization workers in many roles in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Adapting to technology available to participants from the countries that joined this effort, Sadki designed a mix of experiences that broke out of the limits of “training” as it was often designed. He addressed, the inability to scale up to reach large audiences; difficulty to transfer what is learned; inability to accommodate different learners’ starting places; the need …

Teach to Reach

Teach to Reach: peer learning at scale

The Geneva Learning Foundation

Teach to Reach are fast-paced, dynamic digital events connecting local and global practitioners to each other in a new, potentially transformative shared dialogue.  Teach to Reach and other TGLF special events rally thousands, serving as powerful moments of inspiration, providing the amazing sensation of being connected with thousands of fellow, like-minded people and the impetus to transform this feeling into shared purpose and action.  Meet, network, and learn with colleagues from all over the world  Successive editions of TGLF’s flagship event series, “Teach to Reach: Connect”, enabled a cumulative total of 27,000 health professionals to share experiences, test approaches, and identify solutions with international experts listening and learning with them.  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.

Learning from Front-line Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Learning from Frontline Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Global health, Writing

By Julie Jacobson, Alan Brooks, Charlotte Mbuh, and Reda Sadki The escalating threats of climate change cast long shadows over global health, including increases in disease epidemics, profound impacts on mental health, disruptions to health infrastructure, and alterations in the severity and geographical distribution of diseases. Mitigating the impact of such shadows on communities will test the resilience of health infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and especially challenge frontline health workers. The need for effective and cost-efficient public health interventions, such as immunization, will evolve and grow. Health workers, approximately 70% of which are women, that provide immunization and other health services will be trusted local resources to the communities they serve, further amplifying their centrality in resilient health systems. Listening to and building upon the experiences and insights of frontline health workers as they live with and increasingly work to address the manifestations of climate change on …

How we make sense of complexity at The Geneva Learning Foundation

How we make sense of complexity, together, at the Geneva Learning Foundation

The Geneva Learning Foundation

Unique learning experiences generate not just data points but complex stories about what it takes to make change actually happen. By connecting the dots between ideas and implementation, we can zero in on the highest-value insights.  Our Insights Unit uses the latest advances in learning analytics to map how ideas and practices shared between countries and system levels make a difference.  The Unit facilitates international partners to work hand-in-hand with local practitioners.  In addition to thousands of local practitioners contributing and using insights to drive shared learning and action, our Insights Unit’s work is being used by leading global agencies. Examples include:  We are exploring affordable, practical ways to extract meaning from large data sets  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 …

How does The Geneva Learning Foundation break the norm

How does the Geneva Learning Foundation’s approach break the norm?

The Geneva Learning Foundation

100% digital 100% human: using the latest learning technologies and interfaces, we adapt our digital networking interfaces to learner needs and habits to augment their digital and networking capabilities.  Grounded in experience: we foster problem-solving that values both participants’ lived experience and the world’s best available global knowledge.  We open access: participation can be opened for all, across geographic, sectoral or institutional barriers.  New knowledge is created through peer learning: national and international practitioners sharing experience, giving and receiving feedback, and using this new knowledge to solve problems together.  We build trust and mutual respect: safe spaces encourage authentic sharing of experiences to learn what actually works, how, and why.  Driven by intrinsic motivation: proven high engagement rates with no per diem or other extrinsic incentives.  Sustainability built-in: 78% of TGLF programme participants feel “capable” of using TGLF’s methodology for their own needs, and 82% want to organize their own activities using it with their colleagues.  To learn more about the …

The Geneva Learning Foundation- Localizing programming and grounding policy

The Geneva Learning Foundation: Localizing programming and grounding policy

The Geneva Learning Foundation

By defying distance to connect with each other, practitioners expand the realm of what they are able to know beyond their local boundaries.  Listening to these diverse voices and experiences is critical to inform programming, policy and decision-making and build bridges across sectoral silos and other boundaries, by providing:  Thousands of ideas are turned into action, results, and impact  In every TGLF programme, practitioners develop action plans and then report to each other as they implement, documenting results, outcomes, and impact to help each other.  Such peer accountability has proven more reliable, in some cases, than conventional monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.  For individuals, TGLF enables:  Measurable impact in countries: Examples of outcomes tracked in immunization since July 2019  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 …

The Geneva Learning Foundation Scale, reach, and sustainability

The Geneva Learning Foundation: Scale, reach, and sustainability

The Geneva Learning Foundation

In its first years of operation, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) built digital infrastructure to foster and support several global networks and platforms connecting practitioners. Communities supported included:•  immunization and primary health care professionals,•  humanitarian workers advocating gender equality during disasters and other emergency operations,•  doctors, other health workers, and communities addressing neglected needs in women’s health, and•  health workers tackling neglected tropical diseases. This digital infrastructure enabled TGLF to rapidly respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first two years of the pandemic, a team of three people developed and implemented…  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.