Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions: bridging the gap between planning and implementation

The global malaria response is currently navigating a convergence of crises. Epidemiologically, the reduction in mortality has plateaued. Biologically, threats from Anopheles stephensi and partial artemisinin resistance are accelerating. Financially, the 2025 landscape is defined by a severe contraction in foreign assistance, necessitating a radical optimization of resources. In this context, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new guidance, Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions (2025), offers a necessary technical framework.

However, the manual relies on an implementation architecture that remains fragile. To succeed, the technical rigor of subnational tailoring (SNT) should be coupled with an operational mechanism capable of mobilizing the workforce in the current context. This article examines how digital peer learning-to-action networks offer a potential mechanism to address the operational deficits of conventional technical assistance and capacity building.

Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: moving from blanket coverage to allocative efficiency

The rationale for SNT rests on the recognition that transmission heterogeneity – driven by ecology, urbanization, and human behaviour – renders national averages insufficient for operational planning. The WHO guidance codifies a ten-step “Data-to-Action Loop,” designed to be embedded within the National Malaria Strategic Plan (NMSP) cycle. This process moves beyond simple risk mapping to a rigorous cycle of optimization:

• Granular stratification: This involves using composite metrics (combining prevalence, incidence, and mortality) to segment operational units, rather than relying on broad national averages.
• Tailoring and prioritization: This requires developing “ideal scenarios” (what is epidemiologically required) versus “prioritized scenarios” (what is financially feasible). For example, this might involve restricting expensive indoor residual spraying (IRS) to high-burden zones while deploying next-generation nets solely in areas of confirmed pyrethroid resistance.
• Resource optimization: This entails using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to scientifically justify trade-offs, such as cutting lower-impact interventions to preserve life-saving commodities in the face of budget shocks.

The implementation gap: systemic blind spots in subnational tailoring of malaria strategies

While the WHO framework is technically robust, its execution faces systemic “blind spots” that threaten to undermine the strategy:

• The private sector void: In high-burden nations such as Nigeria, the private sector acts as the primary entry point for febrile patients yet remains largely absent from national surveillance data. Without integrating these providers, SNT models risk being built on incomplete datasets, leading to flawed stratification.
• The incentive crisis: The operational culture of many national malaria programmes (NMPs) relies on donor-funded per diems to motivate training and data review. As funding from major donors contracts, this transactional motivation model is fracturing, threatening workforce retention and data quality.
• Centralization of analysis: There is a risk that SNT becomes an extractive process where districts feed data upwards to central planners without retaining analytical ownership. This centralization disempowers the district health teams (DHMTs) expected to execute the tailored strategies.

Operationalizing the subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: the role of digital peer networks

To operationalize SNT in a resource-constrained environment, national malaria programmes require a low-cost mechanism to drive district-level ownership and data quality that goes beyond traditional cascade training. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a digital peer-learning model that warrants examination by technical specialists as a complement to standard capacity-building approaches.

• Shifting from incentives to intrinsic motivation: Traditional training workshops often rely on per diems to ensure attendance. In contrast, the TGLF model connects health workers in digital cohorts to share problem-solving strategies without extrinsic financial incentives. Empirical data from recent cohorts involving 1,715 health workers indicate that participants report high levels of practice application (rated 5.13 on a 6-point scale) based purely on professional recognition and peer accountability. This suggests that intrinsic motivation can be sustained digitally, a critical finding as external funding for operational costs diminishes.
• Validating granular data through ground-level intelligence: SNT models depend entirely on the quality of input data. Digital peer networks can serve as a listening mechanism to surface “tacit knowledge” from the frontline that quantitative surveillance misses. For instance, during recent Teach to Reach sessions, health workers provided over 400 narrative accounts of specific local barriers – such as cultural resistance to bed nets due to associations with burial shrouds – that would not appear in DHIS2 reports. This qualitative intelligence provides a necessary layer of validation for stratification maps.
• Devolving analytical capacity to the district: True SNT requires districts to function as data users, not merely data collectors. The peer-learning platform employs a structured “Impact Accelerator” methodology, which guides frontline staff to conduct their own root-cause analyses (for example, using the “Five Whys” technique) rather than receiving top-down instruction. In Nigeria, working with UNICEF and NPHCDA, The Geneva Learning Foundation supported 4,300 health workers to identify and resolve local bottlenecks in a matter of weeks, effectively decentralizing the “tailoring” process to the community level.
• Cost-efficiency and sustainability: Traditional face-to-face training and supervision are resource-intensive. Comparative data suggests the peer-learning model delivers capacity building at approximately 90% lower cost than traditional technical assistance methods. This is primarily by virtue of scalability: costs very little whether there are 10 or 1,000 participants. Furthermore, in a country-specific study, 82% of a cohort reported using TGLF’s peer learning model for their own needs, and 78% said they needed no further assistance from TGLF. More than half of participants stay in touch because they want to. This aligns with both the value for money and sustainability mandates of malaria partners.

We need more than technical precision to overcome operational inertia

The WHO’s Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions guidance provides the necessary technical standards, stratification algorithms, and modeling tools for the next phase of malaria control. However, technical precision alone cannot overcome operational inertia.

TGLF’s peer-learning model demonstrates that it is possible to shift from top-down instruction to lateral learning, and from extrinsic financial incentives to intrinsic professional motivation. For technical partners and epidemiologists, integrating these two approaches – rigorous technical stratification coupled with broad-based workforce mobilization – could provide an innovative path to sustaining gains in a fragile funding landscape.

Image: “Contours of Local Knowledge”, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. This installation stretches organic planes across a web of taut, intersecting lines, echoing how malaria responses must adapt to the distinct shapes of local realities. The tension between each form –sometimes pulling apart, sometimes holding together – mirrors the work of tailoring strategies to varied terrains, communities, and transmission patterns. By revealing strength in flexibility and coherence in diversity, the piece evokes a central truth of subnational action: health systems become most effective when they align with the textures of the places and people they serve.

References

#globalHealth #guideline #implementationGap #learningStrategy2 #malaria #peerLearning #snt #theGenevaLearningFoundation #worldHealthOrganization

Retrouver les enfants congolais non-vaccinés: des acteurs de tout le pays lancent le premier Accélérateur zéro-dose pour renforcer la mise en oeuvre et le suivi

«Si je réussis mon projet de terrain, je m’attends à avoir au moins vacciné 345 enfants».

Cet engagement n’a pas été pris par un ministre dans la capitale, mais par Jérémie Mpata Lumpungu, infirmier titulaire dans la province du Kasaï.

Il n’était pas seul.

Lundi 10 novembre 2025, un appel a résonné à travers la République démocratique du Congo.

Depuis Kinshasa, le Dr Josaphat-Francois WETSHIKOY, épidémiologiste, a détaillé son objectif pour les 21 prochains jours: «récupérer 30 % des enfants» non vaccinés dans sa zone cible de 230 000.

Barthélemy Daké Saoromou, préparant une stratégie mobile, vise «plus de 500 enfants zéro dose».

Cette détermination palpable, venue de praticiens de tout le pays, a marqué le lancement de l’«Accélérateur d’impact zéro-dose».

Il ne s’agit pas d’une formation ou d’un atelier de plus.

C’est une nouvelle phase d’action, un «système de soutien» pour la mise en oeuvre et le suivi, conçu par la Fondation Apprendre Genève (TGLF), en partenariat avec l’UNICEF, avec le soutien de Gavi, et sous l’égide du Programme Élargi de Vaccination (PEV) de la RDC. En savoir plus…

Vous souhaitez rejoindre la prochaine séance de l’Accélérateur? Suivez ce lien.

C’est, pour ses participants, un «baptême du feu».

Du constat à l’action

Ce nouvel élan pour la vaccination n’est pas né de rien.

Il s’appuie sur les leçons d’un vaste exercice d’apprentissage par les pairs qui a mobilisé plus de 1 600 praticiens congolais pour développer 385 projets de terrain.

Les résultats de cette analyse, présentés au lancement, ont été sans concession.

La découverte la plus importante: le problème des enfants zéro dose en RDC est avant tout «un problème de gestion et de relation».

Les praticiens ont affinée l’explication officielle inscrite dans le plan Mashako, selon laquelle le principal obstacle est que «la mère est trop occupée».

Pour eux, la «véritable cause, la cause racine, c’est un échec du système de santé», c’est-à-dire un système qui «ne réussit pas à adapter ses services […] à la vie réelle et au travail des parents».

Leurs analyses ont aussi pointé un problème de gestion des Relais Communautaires (RECO), qui se sentent «ignorés ou exclus de la planification», et une méfiance qui naît «en réaction à des échecs précis du système de santé», comme la mauvaise gestion des effets secondaires des vaccins.

Une cohorte du niveau national à l’aire de santé

Les voix qui portent ces engagements ne sont pas anonymes.

La force de l’Accélérateur réside dans la diversité de sa cohorte.

Les participants sont des médecins (comme le Dr Derrick Ngoyi MALOBO au Centre de santé de Kenge), des infirmiers et infirmières (comme Marlène KAPINGA MULUMBA au niveau national ou Jérémie Mpata Lumpungu au niveau local), des agents de santé publique (comme Bonnet Leteta en province) et, surtout, un grand nombre d’agents de santé communautaire (comme Martine YOWA NDAYE ou David BINWA dans leurs Aires de santé).

Ils représentent tous les échelons du système: du niveau National à Kinshasa jusqu’au Centre de santé le plus reculé, en passant par la Province et la Zone de santé.

Ils proviennent du Gouvernement (la majorité des participants), mais aussi de la Société civile (ONG) et du Secteur privé.

C’est cette alliance de praticiens, du sommet à la base, qui est maintenant mise en action.

L’action avant vendredi

Le mécanisme de l’Accélérateur est conçu pour être radicalement concret, transformant les constats de terrain en action immédiate.

D’abord, chaque participant doit fixer un «objectif à 30 jours».

Il doit répondre à cinq questions: quelle communauté aider; combien d’enfants zéro dose s’y trouvent; quelles acteurs impliquer; quel est l’obstacle principal; et quel résultat mesurable atteindre en un mois.

Ensuite, et c’est le cœur du réacteur, chaque lundi, le participant doit définir une «action spécifique et réalisable» qu’il s’engage à accomplir avant le vendredi de la même semaine.

Lors du lancement, les engagements pour la semaine à venir étaient tangibles.

Pour Noëlly Zola Watusadisi, médecin dans la zone de santé de Bombay qui gère 12 îlots fluviaux, son action pour la semaine n’est pas de tout faire, mais de commencer: «entrer en contact avec les infirmiers de chaque îlot» et appeler les chefs de quartier pour préparer la sensibilisation.

David Binwa, du Nord-Kivu, a un plan similaire.

Son action d’ici vendredi: tenir une activité avec les RECO d’ici jeudi afin d’«identifier les vrais problèmes» avant de lancer une sensibilisation de masse.

Le rendez-vous: la redevabilité entre pairs

L’efficacité de l’Accélérateur repose sur un dernier pilier: la redevabilité (accountability) entre pairs.

Ce vendredi, chaque participant devra répondre à un formulaire de suivi de trois questions.

La première: «Avez-vous vacciné des enfants à zéro dose cette semaine?»

La seconde: «Dans quelle mesure avez-vous progressé dans la réalisation de votre action de la semaine?».

Mais le véritable test aura lieu lundi prochain, lors de la prochaine assemblée de la cohorte.

«Lundi prochain à l’Assemblée, déjà, vos collègues vont rechercher, est-ce qu’il est là, celui qui avait déclaré qu’il allait faire telle ou telle chose la semaine dernière», a prévenu Charlotte Mbuh, qui accompagne le groupe. «Et si vous n’êtes pas là, ils vont en faire le constat, mais si vous êtes là, ils vont vous demander est-ce que vous l’avez fait?».

Cette pression n’est pas conçue comme une punition.

L’objectif est de «nourrir l’entraide, de nourrir la solidarité».

Pour soutenir ce «Mouvement congolais pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030», 167 ambassadeurs de la Fondation ont été intronisés lors de la cérémonie.

Ce sont eux, des praticiens de terrain, qui aideront à animer cette entraide.

L’Accélérateur est lancé.

Les premiers engagements sont pris.

Le compte à rebours avant lundi prochain a commencé.

Image: Collection de la Fondation Apprendre Genève © 2025. L’image «Échos du soin» fait émerger deux visages comme des souvenirs partagés, fragiles mais tenaces. Les formes simples et les couleurs mêlées disent la tendresse, la fatigue, et la force discrète du geste de soin, qui marque durablement celles et ceux qui donnent comme celles et ceux qui reçoivent.

#enfantsZeroDose #equite #francophone #globalHealth #impactAccelerator #laFondationApprendreGeneve #peerLearning #rdc #republiqueDemocratiqueDuCongo #theGenevaLearningFoundation #unicef #vaccination

Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health

Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.”

Gates argues that the principal metric for climate action should not be global temperature or near-term emission reductions alone, but measured improvement in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

He argues that the focus of climate action should be on the “greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people.”

The suffering of poor communities must take priority, since, in his view, “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”

Climate change is about the health of the most vulnerable

This position resonates with a core message that has emerged across global health over the past several years: climate change is about health.

New data from the 2025 Lancet Countdown draw a stark picture:

• Heat-related mortality has risen 63 percent since the 1990s.
• Deaths from wildfire smoke and air pollution caused by fossil fuels continue to climb.
• Food insecurity, driven by erratic weather, is destabilizing health and economies at once.
• Thirteen out of twenty key health indicators linked to climate impacts now signal urgent action is needed.

Health professionals, policy coalitions, scientists, and patient advocates have succeeded in bringing this nexus between climate and health squarely to the global agenda, culminating in recent summits where health finally shared the main stage with energy and economics.

Yet just as the science and advocacy align, political attention risks fragmenting.

Despite sweeping reports, evidence, and high-level declarations, momentum can ebb.

There is now a risk that the transformative potential embedded in the climate-health linkage may not be fully realized.

Here, Gates’s pivot could actually be the inflection point that the field needs.

The case for health workforce-centered adaptation

For nearly a decade, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has been advocating and demonstrating that meeting complex humanitarian, health, and development challenges requires strengthening not just technical capacities or disease programs, but the underlying connective tissue of the health system: its workforce.

TGLF’s digital peer-learning platform now connects over 70,000 health workers across more than 130 countries.

These practitioners – mostly in government service, often in low-resource or crisis-affected settings – are the first to observe, and often the first to respond to, the local impacts of climate change on health.

Their reports show that health impacts are immediate and multi-faceted: rising malnutrition from crop failures, increases in waterborne diseases following floods, new burdens from air pollution and heat, and psychological distress from repeated disasters.

What sets this approach apart is its systemic focus.

Climate change is not a threat that can be “verticalized”.

It demands responses that are adaptive, distributed, and coordinated across all levels of the health system.

TGLF’s innovation lies in harnessing a distributed network to surface and scale locally-grounded solutions:

• Peer learning accelerates uptake of proven local adaptations – health workers share and adapt practices in near real time.
• Digital networks enable early warning and rapid, cost-effective dissemination of context-appropriate strategies, even in remote settings.
• The workforce is not merely the channel for external solutions but is positioned as a community of problem-solvers and trusted communicators, leaders in building and sustaining resilience.

Data from these initiatives demonstrate that such networked learning delivers results at scale, often with return on investment superior to parallel vertical programs, and increases system resilience and flexibility.

Development is adaptation: the need for human capital investment

The urgency and logic of these approaches are reinforced by ongoing policy developments ahead of COP30:

• WHO’s Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2025, recognizes that without context-sensitive system strengthening, existing approaches are insufficient, and positions knowledge and workforce mobilization as strategic imperatives.
• The COP30 Belem Health Action Plan establishes adaptation of the health sector to climate change as an international priority, calling for holistic, cross-sectoral strategies, and “community engagement and participation as foundational to implementation.”

Without empowered and connected health workers, no global action plan will reach those most at risk or maintain public trust.

A strategic investment imperative: why the next breakthrough must be human-centered

The philanthropic search for cost-effective, scalable, and measurable impact has built immense legacies in reducing child mortality and combating infectious disease.

Gates’ own approach of pioneering “vertical” innovations, optimizing delivery through metrics, and prioritizing technical solutions has been transformative, especially at the intersection of science and delivery.

However, emerging science show the limits of technical “magic bullets” absent robust, interconnected local systems.

Trust, legitimacy, and action flow from the relationships health workers build in – and with – their communities.

If development is adaptation, what does this mean for the next phase in climate-health philanthropy?

If the measure of climate action’s value is the scale and speed at which lives are improved and disasters averted, investing in the human infrastructure of the health system is the most evidence-based, cost-effective, and legacy-ensuring play available.

Without these bridges, even the best technology or policies will fail to gain a durable footprint at community level, especially as climate impacts deepen.

Health is where climate change action matters most

The world is waking to the reality that technical solutions alone cannot future-proof health against climate risks.

We need to focus on the highest-value levers.

This starts with a distributed, networked workforce at the coalface of the crisis, empowered to adapt, share, and lead.

In a world of accelerating climate shocks and retreating political will, the boldest, most rational bet for sustained global impact is to go “horizontal” – to invest in the people and the systems that connect them.

By helping build adaptive, digitally connected networks of health professionals, philanthropy can reinforce the foundation upon which all high-impact innovation rests.

This is not a departure from the pursuit of technology-driven change, but rather the necessary evolution to ensure every breakthrough finds its mark – and that trust in science and public health stays strong under pressure.

If ever there was a time for rigorous, data-driven engagement that bridges technology, health, and community resilience, this is it.

Every indicator – scientific, economic, social – suggests that communities will confront more climate disruptions in the coming years.

Investing in the people who translate science into health, who stand with their communities in crisis, is the most robust, scalable, and sustainable bet that any philanthropist or society can make.

By focusing on these vital human connections, the world can ensure that innovation works where it matters most – and that the next chapter of climate action measures true success by the health, security, and opportunity it delivers for all.

History will honor those whose support creates not only tools and policies, but the living networks of trust and craft upon which community resilience depends.

That is the climate breakthrough waiting to happen.

References

#billGates #climateAndHealth #climateChangeAndHealth #development #humanCapitalInvestment #lancetCountdown #peerLearning #theGenevaLearningFoundation #workforce

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

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 is the learning, whereas in many other businesses, the performance is performing the task that you’re supposed to do.” 

The problem is not that AI will do our work for us.

The problem is that in doing so, it may cause us to forget how to think.

This is not a distant, dystopian fear.

It is happening now.

A landmark study presented by Vincent-Lancrin delivered a startling verdict: students who used a generic, answer-providing chatbot to study for a math exam performed significantly worse than those who used no AI at all.

The tool, designed for efficiency, had become a shortcut around the very cognitive struggle that builds lasting knowledge.

Jason Lodge of the University of Queensland captured the paradox with a simple analogy.

“It’s like an e-bike,” he explained. “An e-bike will help you get to a destination… But if you’re using an e-bike to get fit, then getting the e-bike to do all the work is not going to get you fit. And ultimately our job… is to help our students be fit in their minds”.

This phenomenon, dubbed “cognitive offloading,” is creating what Professor Dragan Gasevic of Monash University calls an epidemic of “metacognitive laziness”.

Metacognition – the ability to think about our own thinking – is the engine of critical inquiry.

Yet, generative AI is masterfully engineered to disarm it.

By producing content that is articulate, confident, and authoritative, it exploits a fundamental human bias known as “processing fluency,” our tendency to be less critical of information that is presented cleanly. 

“Generative AI articulates content… that basically sounds really good, and that can potentially disarm us as the users of such content,” Gasevic warned.

The risk is not merely that a health worker will use AI to draft a report, but that they will trust its conclusions without the rigorous, critical validation that prevents catastrophic errors.

Empower Learners for the Age of AI: the human algorithm

If AI is taking over the work of assembling and synthesizing information, what, then, is left for us to learn and to do?

This question has triggered a profound re-evaluation of our priorities.

The consensus emerging is a radical shift away from what can be automated and toward what makes us uniquely human.

The urgency of this shift is not just philosophical.

It is economic.

Matt Sigelman, president of The Burning Glass Institute, presented sobering data showing that AI is already automating the routine tasks that constitute the first few rungs of a professional career ladder.

“The problem is that if AI overlaps with… those humble tasks… then employers tend to say, well, gee, why am I hiring people at the entry level?” Sigelman explained.

The result is a shrinking number of entry-level jobs, forcing us to cultivate judgment and adaptive skills from day one.

This new reality demands a focus on what machines cannot replicate.

For Pinar Demirdag, an artist and co-founder of the creative AI company Cuebric, this means a focus on the “5 Cs”: Creativity, Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Collective Care, and Consciousness.

She argues that true creativity remains an exclusively human domain. “I don’t believe any machine can ever be creative because it doesn’t lie in their nature,” she asserted.

She believes that AI is confined to recombining what is already in its data, while human creativity stems from presence and a capacity to break patterns.

This sentiment was echoed by Rob English, a creative director who sees AI not as a threat, but as a catalyst for a deeper humanity.

“It creates an opportunity for us to sort of have to amplify the things that make us more human,” he argued.

For English, the future of learning lies in transforming it from a transactional task into a “lifestyle,” a mode of being grounded in identity and personal meaning.

He believes that as the value of simply aggregating information diminishes, what becomes more valuable is our ability “to dissect… to interpret or to infer”.

In this new landscape, the purpose of learning – whether for a student or a seasoned professional – shifts from knowledge transmission to the cultivation of human-centric capabilities.

It is no longer enough to know things.

The premium is on judgment, contextual wisdom, ethical reasoning, and the ability to connect with others – skills forged through the very intellectual and social struggles that generic AI helps us avoid.

Empower Learners for the Age of AI: Collaborate or be colonized

While the pedagogical challenge is profound, the institutional one may be even greater.

For all the talk of disruptive change, the current state in many of our organizations is one of inertia, indecision, and a dangerous passivity.

As George Siemens lamented after investing several years in trying to move the needle at higher education institutions, leadership has been “too passive,” risking a repeat of the era when institutions outsourced online learning to corporations known as “OPMs” (online programme managers) that did not share their values: “I’m worried that we’re going to do the same thing with AI, that we’re just going to sit on our hands, leadership’s going to be too passive… and the end result is we’re going to be reliant down the road on handing off the visioning and the capabilities of AI to external partners.”

The presidents of two of the largest nonprofit universities in the United States, Dr. Mark Milliron of National University and Dr. Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of Southern New Hampshire University, offered a candid diagnosis of the problem.

Ryerson set the stage: “We don’t see it as a tool. We see it as a true framework redesign for learning for the future.” 

However, before any institution can deploy sophisticated AI, it must first undertake the unglamorous, foundational work of fixing its own data infrastructure.

“A lot of universities aren’t willing to take two steps back before they take three steps forward on this,” Dr. Milliron stated. “They want to jump to the advanced AI… when they actually need to go back and really… get the basics done”.

This failure to fix the “plumbing” leaves organizations vulnerable, unable to build their own strategic capabilities.

Such a dynamic is creating what keynote speaker Howard Brodsky termed a new form of “digital colonialism,” where a handful of powerful tech companies dictate the future of critical public goods like health and education.

His proposed solution is for institutions to form a cooperative, a model that has proven successful for over a billion people globally.

“I don’t believe at the current that universities have a seat at the table,” Brodsky argued. “And the only way you get a seat at the table is scale. And it’s to have a large voice”.

A cooperative would give organizations the collective power to negotiate with tech giants and co-shape an AI ecosystem that serves public interest, not just commercial agendas.

Without such collective action, the fear is that our health systems and educational institutions will become mere consumers of technologies designed without their input, ceding their agency and their future to Silicon Valley.

The choice is stark: either become intentional builders of our own solutions, or become passive subjects of a transformation orchestrated by others.

The engine of equity

Amid these profound challenges, a powerfully optimistic vision for AI’s role is also taking shape.

If harnessed intentionally, AI could become one of the greatest engines for equity in our history.

The key lies in recognizing the invisible advantages that have long propped up success.

As Dr. Mark Milliron explained in a moment of striking clarity: “I actually think AI has the potential to level the playing field… second, third, fourth generation higher ed students have always had AI. They were extended families… who came in and helped them navigate higher education because they had a knowing about it.”

For generations, those from privileged backgrounds have had access to a human support network that functions as a sophisticated guidance system.

First-generation students and professionals in under-resourced settings are often left to fend for themselves.

AI offers the possibility of democratizing that support system.

A personalized AI companion can serve as that navigational guide for everyone, answering logistical questions, reducing administrative friction, and connecting them with the right human support at the right time.

This is not about replacing human mentors.

It is about ensuring that every learner and every practitioner has the foundational scaffolding needed to thrive.

As Dr. Lisa Marsh Ryerson put it, the goal is to use AI to “serve more learners, more equitably, with equitable outcomes, and more humanely”.

This vision recasts AI not as a threat to be managed, but as a moral imperative to be embraced.

It suggests that the technology’s most profound impact may not be in how it changes our interaction with knowledge, but in how it changes our access to opportunity.

Technology as culture

The debates from the conference make one thing clear.

The AI revolution is not, at its core, a technological event.

Read the article: Why learning technologists are obsolete

It is a pedagogical, ethical, and institutional one.

It forces us to ask what we believe the purpose of learning is, what skills are foundational to a flourishing human life, and what kind of world we want to build.

The technology will not provide the answers.

It will only amplify the choices we make.

As we stand at this inflection point, the most critical task is not to integrate AI, but to become more intentional about our own humanity.

The future of our collective ability to solve the world’s most pressing challenges depends on it.

Do you work in health?

As AI capabilities advance rapidly, health leaders need to prepare, learn, and adapt. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s new AI4Health Framework equips you to harness AI’s potential while protecting what matters most—human experience, local leadership, and health equity. Learn more: https://www.learning.foundation/ai.

References

• Sadki, R. (2025). Why peer learning is critical to survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21123
• Sadki, R. (2025). A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action. https://doi.org/10.59350/gr56c-cdd51
• Sadki, R. (2025). What does AI reasoning mean for global health?. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21102
• Sadki, R. (2025). The crisis in scientific publishing: from AI fraud to epistemic justice. https://doi.org/10.59350/532vk-hq503
• Sadki, R. (2025). The agentic AI revolution: what does it mean for workforce development?. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21092
• Sadki, R. (2025). Language as AI’s universal interface: What it means and why it matters. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21088
• Sadki, R. (2025). Eric Schmidt’s San Francisco Consensus about the impact of artificial intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21109
• Sadki, R. (2019). The next big thing in learning. https://doi.org/10.59350/fp6zp-zpj84

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

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

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 qui s’est opérée ce mercredi 8 octobre.

Après une première journée consacrée au partage des défis, la dynamique a changé.

L’objectif n’était plus seulement d’identifier les problèmes, mais de les disséquer avec une précision accrue.

Dans le cadre de l’initiative menée par La Fondation Apprendre Genève et ses partenaires — le ministère de la Santé de la RDC, l’UNICEF et Gavi — les participants ont été invités à appliquer une deuxième fois la méthode d’analyse des causes profondes.

L’effet a été immédiat.

« La séance d’hier m’a permis de comprendre que ce que je pensais être une cause profonde n’était qu’une cause intermédiaire », a ainsi partagé Hermione Raissa Tientcheu Ngounou, illustrant la sophistication croissante des analyses.

Le dialogue rompu entre la foi et la santé publique

Au cœur du Kasaï, un groupe de travail a de nouveau abordé la question des églises de réveil hostiles à la vaccination.

Mais cette fois, l’analyse a dépassé le constat d’un obstacle religieux. « Les fidèles, lorsqu’ils tombent malades, ne vont pas dans les structures sanitaires, mais ils préfèrent rester dans des centres de prière », a expliqué le rapporteur du groupe, décrivant une rupture de confiance avec le système de santé formel.

En poussant la réflexion, les participants ont conclu que le vrai problème était « l’absence d’un cadre de concertation formel entre le système de santé et les confessions religieuses ».

La cause profonde n’était donc pas la foi, mais une faillite institutionnelle.

Une prise de conscience qui a immédiatement fait émerger des solutions.

« Dans le contexte des églises de réveil, les leaders de ces églises doivent être nos alliés », a insisté un participant, Mwamialumba Fidel.

Vacciner dans le chaos de la guerre

Dans le Nord-Kivu, une autre discussion a porté sur la vaccination des populations déplacées.

Confrontés à une cause première comme la guerre, hors de leur portée, les soignants ont fait preuve d’un pragmatisme remarquable.

L’analyse ne s’est pas enlisée dans un sentiment d’impuissance.

Le groupe a rapidement identifié une faille concrète dans le système.

« Pour les déplacés, le grand problème est que les enfants arrivent sans carnet de vaccination, et on ne sait pas comment les intégrer dans le PEV de routine », a partagé Clémence Mitongo.

La cause racine n’était donc plus le conflit, mais « le manque de stratégie spécifique pour la prise en charge de ces enfants » une fois en sécurité.

Le groupe a ainsi transformé un problème insoluble en un défi organisationnel sur lequel il est possible d’agir.

Au-delà des frontières, une leçon d’économie locale

La richesse des échanges a été amplifiée par la participation de professionnels d’autres pays.

Un des cas les plus édifiants est venu de Madagascar, où 93 enfants d’un village de pêcheurs n’étaient pas vaccinés.

« Les femmes sont obligées d’accompagner les hommes pour la vente du poisson. Et quand elles reviennent, nos équipes sont déjà parties », a expliqué le rapporteur du groupe.

La cause profonde, révélée par l’analyse, n’avait rien de sanitaire.

C’était l’absence d’un fumoir pour conserver le poisson, qui forçait les femmes à s’absenter.

L’impact de cet exemple a été puissant.

« Ce cas du Madagascar est très édifiant et illustre parfaitement la pertinence de l’analyse approfondie », a commenté Alphonse Kitoga.

Une pédagogie de l’action

Ces cas pratiques illustrent la maturation rapide des participants.

La méthode des « cinq pourquoi », introduite la veille, est devenue un outil maîtrisé, un réflexe analytique.

« C’est une nouvelle approche pour nous », a affirmé Baudouin Mbase Bonganga. « Le fait de travailler en groupe, de partager les expériences, ça nous a vraiment enrichis ».

L’exercice ne vise pas à transmettre un savoir, mais à cultiver une compétence: la capacité de chaque professionnel à devenir un fin diagnosticien des problèmes de sa communauté et un architecte de solutions adaptées.

De l’analyse à l’action

Cette journée d’exploration intensive n’est qu’une étape.

Les participants ont jusqu’au vendredi 10 octobre pour soumettre la première version de leur projet de terrain, où ils appliqueront ces analyses à leurs propres communautés.

L’initiative démontre qu’en s’appropriant les bons outils, les acteurs de terrain peuvent rapidement monter en puissance.

Comme l’a brillamment résumé Papa Gorgui Samba Ndiaye: « Cette méthode permet de contextualiser réellement les problèmes, et ce qui est bien, c’est qu’on sort des solutions toutes faites… Ça nous amène à innover ».

Le mouvement est en marche, et il est porté par ceux qui, chaque jour, sont en première ligne.

Image: Peer learning exercise, as seen from The Geneva Learning Foundation’s livestreaming studio.

#francophone #Gavi #globalHealth #peerLearning #RépubliqueDémocratiqueDuCongo #TheGenevaLearningFoundation #UNICEF #zéroDose

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

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 les 1 617 professionnels de la santé inscrits à cet exercice, il ne s’agissait pas d’un webinaire de formation classique, mais d’une étape importante d’un mouvement bien plus large.

Organisé par La Fondation Apprendre Genève, cet exercice est une pierre angulaire du Mouvement congolais pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030 (IA2030).

Il bénéficie du soutien du ministère de la Santé de la RDC à travers son Programme élargi de vaccination (PEV), de l’UNICEF et de Gavi, l’Alliance du Vaccin.

L’initiative renverse le modèle traditionnel de l’aide internationale.

Au lieu de s’appuyer sur des experts extérieurs, elle part d’un postulat aussi simple qu’il est conséquent.

La meilleure expertise pour résoudre les défis de première ligne se trouve chez les travailleurs de la santé eux-mêmes.

La composition de cette cohorte témoigne de la profondeur de l’initiative.

Plus de la moitié des participants proviennent des niveaux périphériques et infranationaux du système de santé, là où la vaccination a lieu.

Un professionnel sur cinq travaille au niveau central, assurant un lien essentiel entre les politiques nationales et les réalités du terrain.

Le profil des participants est tout aussi varié.

Un tiers sont des médecins, 30 % des agents de santé publique, suivis par les agents de santé communautaire (13 %) et les infirmiers (9 %).

Fait marquant, près de la moitié d’entre eux travaillent directement pour le ministère de la Santé à travers le Programme élargi de vaccination (le «PEV»).

Cette forte proportion de personnel gouvernemental, complétée par une représentation significative de la société civile et du secteur privé, ancre fermement l’initiative dans une appropriation nationale.

Le regard du terrain

« Les défis sont tellement grandioses », a déclaré Franck Kabongo, consultant en santé publique à Lubumbashi, dans la province du Haut-Katanga.

En effet, les défis décrits par les participants sont immenses.

Il a souligné deux obstacles majeurs.

D’une part, la difficulté d’atteindre les enfants dans les communautés reculées.

Car les problèmes logistiques représentent un « casse-tête» pour de nombreux acteurs de santé impliqué dans la vaccination.

Pour Mme Bosita à Kinshasa, le problème est profondément social.

Son organisation soutient les enfants vulnérables, y compris les orphelins et ceux qui vivent dans la rue, dont beaucoup sont nés de jeunes mères sans suivi médical.

« Il n’y a pas assez de sensibilisation sur le terrain par rapport à cette notion », a-t-elle déploré, expliquant sa volonté d’intégrer la vaccination dans le travail de son association.

Ces témoignages, partagés dès les premières minutes, ont brossé un tableau saisissant d’un corps de métier dévoué.

Ils luttent contre un enchevêtrement complexe de barrières logistiques, sociales et informationnelles qui laissent les enfants les plus vulnérables sans protection.

À la recherche des causes profondes

Le cœur de l’exercice n’est pas seulement de partager les problèmes, mais de les disséquer.

Grâce à une analyse de groupe structurée, les participants s’exercent à la technique des « cinq pourquoi ».

Cette méthode vise à dépasser les symptômes pour trouver la véritable cause fondamentale d’un problème.

Lors d’une session plénière, Charles Bawande, animateur communautaire dans la zone de santé de Kalamu à Kinshasa, a présenté un dilemme courant.

Une forte concentration d’enfants zéro dose parmi les communautés de rue, très mobiles et souvent peu scolarisées.

Au départ, le problème semblait être un simple manque d’information.

Mais au fur et à mesure que le groupe a creusé, une réalité plus complexe est apparue.

Pourquoi les enfants sont-ils manqués?

Parce que les travailleurs de santé communautaires, les relais communautaires, ne disposent pas des informations nécessaires.

Pourquoi n’ont-ils pas ces informations?

Parce qu’ils n’assistent souvent pas aux séances d’information essentielles.

Pourquoi n’y assistent-ils pas?

Parce qu’ils sont occupés par d’autres activités.

« Ils doivent vivre, ils doivent manger… ils sont locataires, ils doivent payer le loyer », a expliqué M. Bawande.

La dernière question a révélé le cœur du problème.

Pourquoi sont-ils occupés par d’autres choses?

Parce que leur travail de relais communautaire est entièrement bénévole.

Alors qu’on attend d’eux qu’ils agissent comme des volontaires, beaucoup sont des parents et des chefs de famille qui doivent donner la priorité à leur gagne-pain.

Un problème qui semblait être un simple déficit d’information s’est révélé être ancré dans la précarité économique du système de santé bénévole.

Une mosaïque de défis partagés

Lorsque les participants se sont répartis en près de 80 petits groupes, leurs discussions ont révélé un large éventail d’obstacles, chacun profondément lié au contexte local.

Les rapports des groupes ont dressé une carte riche et détaillée des freins à la vaccination à travers le vaste pays.

Près de Goma, dans le Nord-Kivu, le groupe de Clémence Mitongo a identifié l’insécurité due à la guerre comme une barrière principale qui a déplacé les populations et perturbé les services de santé.

Dans la province du Kasaï, le groupe de Yondo Kabonga a mis en lumière l’impact des rumeurs, de la désinformation et des barrières géographiques comme les ravins et les rivières.

Ailleurs, d’autres groupes ont fait état de la résistance issue de convictions religieuses, certaines églises enseignant à leurs fidèles que la foi seule suffit à protéger leurs enfants.

Un autre groupe a discuté du cas des réfugiés revenus d’Angola, où l’ignorance des parents concernant le calendrier vaccinal constitue un obstacle majeur.

Ce diagnostic collectif a démontré la puissance du modèle d’apprentissage par les pairs.

Aucun expert ne pourrait à lui seul posséder une compréhension aussi fine et étendue des défis à l’échelle nationale.

Une nouvelle façon d’apprendre

Cet exercice est fondamentalement différent des programmes de formation traditionnels.

Il s’agit d’un parcours pratique où les participants deviennent des créateurs de connaissances et leaders des actions qui en découlent.

Au cours du programme, chaque participant développera son propre projet de terrain, qu’il partagera avec son équipe, son centre de santé ou son district.

Il s’agit d’un plan concret pour s’attaquer à un défi « zéro dose » dans sa propre communauté.

Après avoir soumis une version préliminaire d’ici le vendredi 10 octobre, ils entreront dans une phase d’évaluation par les pairs.

Chaque participant recevra les retours de trois collègues et, en retour, en fournira à trois autres, contribuant ainsi à renforcer le travail de chacun par l’intelligence collective.

Tracer une voie à suivre

L’étape suivante pour ces milliers de professionnels de la santé est de consolider leurs discussions de groupe et de poursuivre le travail sur leurs projets individuels avant l’échéance de vendredi.

Le parcours se poursuivra avec des phases consacrées à l’évaluation par les pairs, à la révision des projets et, enfin, à une assemblée générale de clôture pour partager les plans améliorés.

Cet exercice intensif est plus qu’un simple événement.

Il est un catalyseur pour le Mouvement congolais pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030.

L’objectif est de traduire la stratégie mondiale du Programme pour la vaccination à l’horizon 2030 en actions tangibles, menées localement, qui produisent un impact réel.

La solution, comme le suggère ce mouvement, ne se trouve pas dans des lignes directrices venues de Genève, mais dans la sagesse, la créativité et l’engagement combinés de milliers de praticiens congolais, travaillant ensemble à travers tout le pays.

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

#francophone #Gavi #globalHealth #immunization #peerLearning #RépubliqueDémocratiqueDuCongo #TheGenevaLearningFoundation #UNICEF #zéroDose

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

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 course here.

Our approach: A programme built from the ground up

This programme was built from scratch with a distinct philosophy.

We did not start with a pre-packaged curriculum.

Instead, we turned to two foundational sources of knowledge.

• First, we listened to the most valuable resource we have: the firsthand experiences of thousands of practitioners in our global network. Their stories of what truly happens on the front lines—what works, what fails, and why—form the living heart of this programme.
• Second, we grounded our approach in the deep insights of intersectional, decolonial, and feminist scholarship. These perspectives challenge us to move beyond technical fixes and to analyze the systems of power that create gender inequality in the first place.

This unique origin means our programme is a dynamic space co-created with and for practitioners who are serious about transformative change.

Gender in emergencies: Gender through an intersectional lens

Our focus is squarely on gender in emergencies.

We start with gender analysis because it is a fundamental tool for effective humanitarian action.

However, we use an intersectional lens.

We recognize that a person’s experience is shaped not by gender alone, but by how their gender compounds with their age, disability, ethnicity, and other aspects of their identity.

This lens does not replace gender analysis.

It makes it stronger.

It allows us to see how power works differently for different women, men, girls, and boys, and helps us to design solutions that do not inadvertently leave behind the people marginalized by something other than their gender.

Gender in emergencies requires learning at the speed of crisis

Humanitarian response must be rapid, and so must our learning.

A slow, top-down training model cannot keep pace with the reality of a crisis.

The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator is a peer learning-to-action model built for the speed and complexity of humanitarian settings.

It is a ‘learn-by-doing’ experience where your frontline experience is the textbook.

The model is designed to quickly turn your individual insights into collective knowledge and practical action.

You analyze a real challenge from your work, share it with a small group of global peers, and use their feedback to build a concrete plan.

This process accelerates the development of context-specific solutions that are grounded in reality, not just theory.

Your first step: The foundational primer for gender in emergencies

We are starting this new programme with a free, open-access foundational course.

Enrollment is now open.

The course is a quick primer that introduces core concepts of gender, intersectionality, and bias through the real-world stories of practitioners.

It provides the shared language and practical tools to begin your journey of reflection, peer collaboration, and action.

Building a resilient community

This is more than a training programme.

It is an invitation to join a global community of practice.

In a time of backlash and division, creating spaces where we can learn from each other, share our struggles, and find solidarity is a critical act of resistance.

If you are ready to deepen your practice and connect with colleagues who share your commitment, we invite you to join us.

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation © 2025

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

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).

An organization like “Everything will be fine Ukraine” maintains operations within 20 kilometres of active fighting while supporting 6,000 children across three eastern regions. During online peer learning activities, some participants manage air raid interruptions, power outages, and repeated displacement of both staff and families they serve.

“The most powerful solutions often emerge when professionals can learn directly from each other’s experience,” TGLF’s Charlotte Mbuh noted. “But knowledge sharing and learning are necessary but insufficient. Through the ‘Accelerator’ mechanism, we showed that participation results in measurable improvements in children’s wellbeing.”

Learning in crisis

The programme that connected Irina to her peers has achieved something that aid organizations typically spend years trying to build. In less than a year, 331 organizations representing 10,000 staff and volunteers joined a peer learning network that now reaches over one million Ukrainian children. Ninety-one volunteers across 13 countries now serve as focal points, recruiting participants and adapting materials to local contexts. The cost per participant is 87 per cent lower than European training averages. And rather than winding down as initial funding expires, the network is expanding.

Most remarkably, 76 per cent of participants are based in Ukraine itself—not in the European host countries the programme originally planned to serve.

IFRC’s longstanding commitment to integrating mental health into humanitarian response created the institutional framework that made this achievement possible. Speaking at the  EU4Health final event in Brussels in June, IFRC Regional Director for Europe Birgitte Bischoff Ebbesen called IFRC’s effort “the most ambitious targeted mental health and psychosocial support response in the history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.”

TGLF’s specific focus was to explore how online peer learning could support Red Cross staff and volunteers, together with other organizations and networks that support children.

IFRC’s Panu Saaristo explains: “Peer learning creates a horizontal approach where practitioners facing similar challenges can support each other directly. This is really consistent with our community-led and volunteer-driven action led by local volunteers. When tools and approaches are shared peer-to-peer, we see solutions that are both more sustainable and more locally owned.”

The power of learning from and supporting each other

What makes this network different is its rejection of the traditional aid model, where experts tell local workers what to do. Instead, practitioners learn from and support each other.

The approach addresses a fundamental problem in crisis response: conventional training cannot keep pace with rapidly evolving challenges on the ground. When a teacher in Poland encounters a child showing signs of distress linked to their experiences, she can connect within hours to a social worker in Ukraine who has dealt with similar cases.

Katerina W., who worked with Ukrainian refugee students in Slovakia, described creating “safe corners” and “art corners” where children could communicate when trauma left them unable to speak. She shared these techniques not with a supervisor, but with hundreds of peers facing similar challenges across Europe.

“The practical knowledge and real-life examples inspired me to adapt my methods and approach challenges with greater empathy and creativity,” said Jelena P., an education professional from Croatia who participated in the network.

Jennifer R., who founded Teachers for Peace to provide free online lessons to war-affected Ukrainian children, explains the urgent need: “Many of my students show signs of distress that affected their learning. My challenge is to equip volunteer teachers with the right tools so they can feel confident and support the students beyond language learning.”

Building something that lasts

The network provides resources for what aid workers call “psychological first aid” or “PFA” for children—the immediate support provided to children experiencing crisis-related distress. This includes listening without pressure, addressing immediate needs, and connecting children with appropriate services.

But the real innovation lies in how knowledge spreads and gets turned into action. Practitioners connect to share challenges and problem-solve solutions. The agenda emerges from their actual needs, not predetermined curricula.

“At traditional training, we acquire knowledge and practice skills to get diplomas or certificates,” explained Anna Nyzkodubova, a Ukrainian PFA leader who became a facilitator to support her colleagues. “But here, when we learn through peer-to-peer principles, we grow professionally and make our contribution to solving real cases and real challenges.”

This peer learning model has proven so effective that the Geneva Learning Foundation announced in August it would continue the programme for five additional years. 

“We saw that amongst those we had reached, this included practitioners working close to the front lines of armed conflict, working in very difficult conditions,” said Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation, which coordinates the network. “Rather than limiting effectiveness, these challenging conditions revealed significant demand for peer learning. This is why we decided to continue these activities.”

Scale through connection

The network’s growth defies conventional wisdom about aid work. Rather than adding overhead, the growing size of the network enhances learning by providing more diverse experiences and perspectives. A social worker in eastern Ukraine might develop an approach that helps a teacher in Croatia facing similar challenges.

Participants access six different types of activities, from short self-guided modules in multiple languages to intensive month-long programs where they implement specific projects and document results. The variety accommodates practitioners with different schedules and experience levels while maintaining quality through peer review and a strong child protection and mutual support framework.

A different kind of aid

The programme represents a broader shift in how international assistance might work. Rather than extracting knowledge from affected communities to inform distant decision-makers, it amplifies local expertise and creates connections between practitioners facing similar challenges.

For Irina, working with Ukrainian refugees far from her home country, the network provided something invaluable: the knowledge that she was not alone, and that solutions existed within her professional community.

“I realized the importance of separating psychotherapeutic long-term assistance and psychological first aid, especially when working with children who may be at risk of harming themselves,” she said, describing an insight that emerged from group discussions about recognizing when cases require specialist referral.

As the programme enters its next phase, its founders are proposing additional innovations, including apps where practitioners can log experiences and reflect on challenges while building evidence of what works across different contexts.

The model suggests a fundamental reimagining of how knowledge can strengthen local action in crisis response—not from experts to recipients, but between peers who understand each other’s reality because they live it every day. If properly supported, this model could reinforce its importance in the blueprint for future humanitarian action.

References

The initial development and implementation of this programme (2023-2025) was funded by the European Union through a project partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). All ongoing activities, content, and their delivery from 1 September 2025 are the sole responsibility of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

#BirgitteBischoffEbbesen #childProtection #children #Europe #EuropeanUnion #healthOutcomes #learning #mentalHealth #PanuSaaristo #peerLearning #PFA #psychologicalFirstAid #psychosocialSupport #TheGenevaLearningFoundation #Ukraine

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

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 findings back to the plenary, where the work of exploration continued.

Oyelaja Olayide, a medical laboratory scientist from Nigeria, presented her group’s analysis of a child’s death following a lab misdiagnosis. The group’s root cause analysis pointed to a systemic issue: the lack of a quality management system in the laboratory. But then the facilitator turned the question back to her. “What was your role in this?”.

The question hung in the air, shifting the focus from an abstract system to individual responsibility. This pivot is central to the learning process, and the cohort’s diversity is a core element of its design. The majority of participants are frontline health workers—nurses, midwives, doctors, and community health promoters. They work side-by-side as peers with national-level staff and international partners, with government employees making up over 40% of the group. This mix intentionally breaks down traditional hierarchies, creating a space where a policy-maker can learn directly from the lived experience of a clinician in a remote village.

Learn more about the Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice https://www.learning.foundation/bias

After a moment of reflection, Olayide acknowledged her role as a professional with the expertise to see the gap. “My role is to be an advocate,” she concluded, recognizing her duty to push for the implementation of quality control systems that could prevent future tragedies.

From reflection to a plan for action

This deep self-reflection is the foundation for the next stage of the process: creating a viable action plan. For the remainder of the day, participants worked on the third part of their course project, which is due by the end of the week.

The programme’s methodology insists that a good plan is not made for a community, but with a community. Participants were guided to develop action steps that involve listening to the people most affected and ensuring they help lead the change. This requires practitioners to think honestly about their position and power and how they can share it to empower others.

The day’s exploration pushed participants beyond easy answers. It asked them to confront their own biases, acknowledge their power, and accept their professional duty not just to treat patients, but to help fix the broken systems that make them sick. By turning the analytical lens inward, they began to forge the tools they need to build a more equitable future.

About the Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice

The Geneva Learning Foundation is an organization that helps health workers from around the world learn together as equals. It offers the Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice, where health professionals work with each other to make health care more fair for everyone, both in how care is given and in how health is studied. The first course in this program is called EQUITY-001 Equity matters, which introduces a method called HEART. This method helps you turn your experience into a real plan for change. HEART stands for Human Equity, Action, Reflection, and Transformation. This means you will learn to see unfairness in health (Human Equity), create a practical plan to do something about it (Action), think carefully about the problem to find its root cause (Reflection), and make a lasting, positive change for your community (Transformation).

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

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

“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.

The goal for the day was one step in a carefully designed 16-day process: to help practitioners see a familiar problem in a new way, setting the stage for them to build a viable action plan they can use in their communities.

The anatomy of unfairness

The session began with practitioners sharing true stories of systemic failure. These accounts gave a human pulse to the clinical definition of health inequity: the avoidable and unjust conditions that make it harder for some people to be healthy.

To demonstrate how to move from story to analysis, the entire cohort engaged in a collective diagnosis. They focused on a first case presented by Dr. Elizabeth Oduwole, a retired physician, about a 65-year-old man unable to afford his diabetes medication on a meager pension. Together, in a live plenary, they used a simple analytical tool to excavate the root causes of this single injustice.

The tool, known as the “Five Whys,” is less about power and more about simplicity. Its strength lies in its accessibility, providing a common language for a cohort of remarkable diversity. In this programme, community health workers, doctors, nurses, midwives, and others who work for health on the front lines of service delivery make up the majority of participants. They work side-by-side as peers with national-level staff and international partners. Government staff comprise over 40% of the group.

The group’s collective intelligence peeled back the layers of Dr. Oduwole’s story. The man’s inability to afford medicine was not just about poverty (Why #1) , but about a lack of government policy for the elderly (Why #2). This, in turn, was linked to a lack of advocacy (Why #3) , which stemmed from biased social norms that devalue the lives of older adults (Why #4). The root cause they uncovered was a deep-seated cultural belief, passed down through generations, that this was simply the natural order of things (Why #5). In minutes, the problem had transformed from a financial issue into a profound cultural challenge.

A crucible for discovery

With this shared experience, the practitioners were plunged into a rapid series of timed, small-group workshops. In these intense breakout sessions, they applied the same methodology to situations each group identified.

The stories that emerged were stark. One group analyzed the experience of a participant from Nigeria whose father died after being denied oxygen at a hospital because the only available tank was being reserved for a doctor’s mother. Their analysis traced this act back to a root cause of systemic decay and a breakdown in the ethics of the health profession. Another group tackled the insidious spread of health misinformation preventing rural girls in a conflict-afflicted area from receiving the HPV vaccine, identifying the root cause as an inadequate national health communication strategy.

A learning community was born in these workshops. They became a crucible where practitioners, often isolated in their daily work, connect with peers who understand their struggles. By unpacking a real-world problem together, they practice the skills needed for their final course project: a practical action plan due at the end of the week, which they will then have peer-reviewed and revised.

The process is designed to generate unexpected insights. Day 2, “Discovery,” is followed by Day 3, “Exploration,” both dedicated to this intensive peer analysis. By the end of the journey, each participant will have an action plan to tackle a local challenge, one that is often radically different from what they might have first envisioned, because it targets a newly discovered root cause.

The session ended, as it began, with the voices of health workers. The chat filled with a sense of energy and purpose. “We are all eager to learn, to know more, and to make an equitable Africa,” wrote Vivian Abara, a pre-hospital emergency services responder . “We’re really, really ready to go the whole nine yards and do everything, help ourselves, hold each other’s hand and move.”

About The Geneva Learning Foundation

The Geneva Learning Foundation is an organization that helps health workers from around the world learn together as equals. It offers the Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice, where health professionals work with each other to make health care more fair for everyone, both in how care is given and in how health is studied. The first course in this programme is called EQUITY-001 Equity matters, which introduces a method called HEART. This method helps you turn your experience into a real plan for change. HEART stands for Human Equity, Action, Reflection, and Transformation. This means you will learn to see inequity in health (Human Equity), create a practical plan to do something about it (Action), think carefully about the problem to find its root cause (Reflection), and make a lasting, positive change for your community (Transformation).

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #CertificatePeerLearningProgrammeForEquityInResearchAndPractice #experientialLearning #healthEquity #HEART #inequity #peerLearning #TheGenevaLearningFoundation