Gender in emergencies

Gender in emergencies: a new peer learning programme from The Geneva Learning Foundation

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

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 is being devalued. This is not a time for silence. It is a time for solidarity and for finding resilient ways to sustain our practice. In this spirit, The Geneva Learning Foundation is pleased to announce the new Certificate peer learning programme for gender in emergencies. We offer this programme to build upon the decades of vital work by countless practitioners and activists, seeing our role as one of contribution to the collective effort of all who continue to champion gender equality in emergencies. Learn more and request your invitation to the programme and its first …

Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice

From diagnosis to duty: health workers confront their own role in inequity

Reda SadkiGlobal health

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 of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s inaugural peer learning exercise on health equity. The previous day had been about diagnosing the external systems that create such tragedies. But today, the focus shifted. “Yesterday, we looked at the problem,” said TGLF facilitator Dr María Fernanda Monzón. “Today, we look in the mirror. We move from analyzing the situation to analyzing ourselves, our own role, our own power, and our own assumptions”. The practitioner’s role The day’s intensive, small-group workshops challenged participants to move beyond naming a problem to questioning their own connection to it. Groups brought their …

NIGERIA insights report cover

Nigeria Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative: Piloting a national peer learning programme

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Insights report about Nigeria’s Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative surfaces surprising solutions for both demand- and supply-side immunization challenges When 4,434 practitioners from all 36 states asked why children in their communities remained unvaccinated, the problems they thought they understood often had entirely different root causes. “I ended up being surprised at the answer I got,” said one health worker. Half of the health workers who participated in Nigeria’s largest-ever peer learning exercise in July 2024 discovered that their initial assumptions about local immunization challenges were wrong. The six-week programme generated 409 detailed analyses of local immunization challenges, with each reviewed by peers across the country. One year after The Geneva Learning Foundation launched the first Immunization Agenda 2030 Collaborative, in partnership with UNICEF and Gavi, under the auspices of the Nigeria Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a comprehensive insights report documents findings that illuminate persistent gaps between health system …

Peer learning through Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children

Peer learning for Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children

Reda SadkiWriting

This article is based on Reda Sadki’s presentation at the ChildHub “Webinar on Psychological First Aid for Children; Supporting the Most Vulnerable” on 6 March 2025. Learn more about the Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Get insights from professionals who support Ukrainian children. “I understood that if we want to cry, we can cry,” reflected a practitioner in the Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine – illustrating the kind of personal transformation that complements technical training. During the ChildHub “Webinar on Psychological First Aid for Children; Supporting the Most Vulnerable”, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s Reda Sadki explained how peer learning provides value that traditional training alone cannot deliver. The EU-funded program on Psychological First Aid (PFA) for children demonstrates that practitioners …

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

Reda SadkiGlobal 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?

Reda SadkiGlobal 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

Reda SadkiGlobal 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

Reda SadkiAbout 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 learning and development (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 by conventional learning and development practitioners. He addressed, the inability to scale up to reach large audiences; difficulty to transfer what is learned; …

Teach to Reach

Teach to Reach: peer learning at scale

Reda SadkiThe 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

Reda SadkiGlobal 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 …