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Tag: Reda Sadki

  • Global Health Otherwise interviews Reda Sadki

    Global Health Otherwise interviews Reda Sadki

    Global Health Otherwise (GHO), an informal network spearheaded by Dr Luchuo Engelbert Bain, aims to “critically dissect the meanings of decolonization of global health practice, research, and funding”.  GHO spoke to The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Reda Sadki.

    Please tell us about yourself and your area of specialization in global health

    I am the founder and president of the Geneva Learning Foundation, a Swiss non-profit research-and-development organization and “think-and-do” tank. I have over two decades of experience in forging multi-disciplinary teams to invent and execute new ways to lead change through learning.

    My research and practice have explored the significance of learning and leadership to achieve impact, driven by my conviction that education is a powerful philosophy for change in the Digital Age.

    What does it take to make a great career in your area of expertise?

    Success requires understanding that most significant learning contributing to improved performance takes place outside formal training, through informal and incidental learning between peers.

    One must be willing to challenge conventional approaches and experiment with new models that leverage digital networks while maintaining human connections. It’s essential to stay curious, embrace complexity, and focus on enabling real-world impact rather than just knowledge transfer.

    What are the key challenges in your field, and how can these be overcome?

    Key challenges include:

    • Traditional top-down approaches that fail to reach scale or drive sustainable change
    • Disconnect between global expertise and local realities
    • Limited resources and access in low- and middle-income countries

    These can be overcome through:

    • Peer learning networks that connect practitioners across boundaries
    • Digital platforms that enable massive participation while maintaining quality
    • Focus on intrinsic motivation rather than external incentives
    • Emphasis on local action and contextual solutions

    In your view, what needs to change in your main area of interest, and how should we approach this?

    The field of global health learning needs to move beyond conventional training approaches to embrace more dynamic, networked models that empower local practitioners. We need to:

    • Recognize health workers as knowledge creators, not just recipients
    • Leverage digital tools to enable peer learning at scale
    • Focus on supporting locally-led change rather than imposing solutions
    • Build learning cultures that foster continuous improvement

    Can you share any real-world example success stories of your work?

    A notable success was the COVID-19 Peer Hub, which connected over 6,000 health professionals from 86 countries to share strategies for maintaining immunization services during the pandemic.

    Within three months, a third of participants had implemented recovery plans. The Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) has grown to over 16,000 members across 100+ countries, demonstrating the power of peer learning to drive change.

    What advice would you give to policymakers and practitioners dealing with these issues?

    • Invest in digital infrastructure that enables peer learning
    • Trust and empower local health workers as agents of change
    • Design for scale from the start
    • Focus on creating conditions for learning rather than controlling outcomes
    • Embrace complexity and uncertainty rather than seeking simple solutions

    What do you think the future holds for the specific global health issue?

    The future of global health learning will increasingly rely on networked approaches that blend formal and informal learning.

    Digital platforms will continue to evolve, enabling more sophisticated forms of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Success will depend on our ability to support locally-led innovation while maintaining connections across geographic and institutional boundaries.

    Any final thoughts you’d like to share with the younger generation of practitioners aspiring to get into this area of work?

    For aspiring practitioners: Don’t be constrained by traditional models. The most powerful learning often happens through peer connections and real-world problem-solving.

    Focus on building networks and communities that can support continuous learning and adaptation. Remember that in today’s complex world, no one person or institution has all the answers – success comes from our ability to learn and evolve together.

  • Listen to the Ninth Dialogue for Learning, Leadership, and Impact

    Listen to the Ninth Dialogue for Learning, Leadership, and Impact

    The Geneva Learning foundation’s Dialogue connects a diverse group of learning leaders from all over the world who are tackling complex learning, leadership, and impact challenges. We explore the significance of leadership for the future of our societies, explore lessons learned and successes, and problem-solve real-world challenges and dilemmas submitted by Contributors of the Dialogue.

    In the Geneva Learning Foundation’s Ninth Dialogue for Learning & Leadership, we start with Dr. Mai Abdalla. After studying global health security in at Yosei University South Korea and both public health and pharmaceutical science in her own country, Egypt. By the time she turned 30, Dr Abdalla had already worked with the Ministry of Health, UN agencies, and the African Union Commission. The accomplishments of her professional life are just the starting point, as we want to explore where and how did she learn to do what she does now? What has shaped her practice of leadership?

    We are privileged to have Key Contributors Laura Bierema and Bill Gardner, together with Karen Watkins, three Scholars who have dedicated their life’s work to the study of leadership and learning. As we learn about Mai Abdalla’s leadership journey, they share their insights and reflections.

    Here are a few of the questions we have explored in previous episodes of the Dialogue:

    • How do you define your leadership in relationship to learning?
    • Do you see yourself as a leader? Why or why not? If you do, who are your ‘followers’? Are you a ‘learning leader’ and, if so, what does that mean?
    • How do you define leadership in this Digital Age? How is it different from leadership in the past?
    • When and how did you realize the significance of the leadership question in your work and life? Who or what helped you come to consciousness? What difference did it make to have this new consciousness about the importance of leadership?
    • What is your own leadership practice now? Can you tell us about a time when you exercised ‘leadership’. What were the lessons learned? What would you do the same or differently if confronted with the same situation in the future?

    In the second half of the Dialogue, we explored the leadership challenges of other other invited Contributors, including:

    • Sanusi Getso on leadership to establish antenatal care services for a neglected community.
    • Alève Mine shares her quandary about how to understand something for which no scaffold exists in one’s current view of the world.
  • Survivre au sida: Celebrating life to fight racism, poverty, and disease in the poor suburbs of Paris

    Survivre au sida: Celebrating life to fight racism, poverty, and disease in the poor suburbs of Paris

    Click on the audio player’s right arrow to listen to the radio show.

    Arab and African families were hit hard by the AIDS epidemic in France. They were amongst the first to be diagnosed in the early 1980s. The conjunction of poverty and racism then resulted in thousands of infections that were preventable and deaths that – once combination therapy became available in mid-1990s – were avoidable. It is estimated that men, women, and children of Arab and African origin account for half of the 35,000 AIDS deaths during the first two decades of the epidemic in France.

    Survivre au sida (Surviving AIDS) is a weekly radio programme and web site created by Reda Sadki in 1995. The show is now produced by the Comité des familles, the organization he founded in 2003 to mobilize families of all backgrounds facing HIV. But Reda stayed at the helm until 2010, when he hired a young journalist he had trained to continue his work.

    Although broadcast from a small, community-access radio station in Paris, Survivre au sida in 2005 over 150,000 unique visitors each month came to the radio show’s web site. Half of them are from France and other European countries. The other half are from countries in West Africa where French is spoken. There are also listeners in Haiti and Canada.

    First public demonstration by Arab and African families facing HIV in France in 2002 (Photo: Reda Sadki)
    First public demonstration by Arab and African families facing HIV in France in 2002 (photo: Reda Sadki)

    “Survivre au sida [Surviving AIDS] is not a radio show about AIDS. It’s about speaking to the needs of people living with HIV,” explains Reda. It’s about living with the virus, loving with the virus, and having healthy children despite the virus. “In 1995, when I started, the virus was still equated with a death sentence. Yet, a clinical trial had already demonstrated that antiretrovirals could prevent mother-to-child transmission. And the power of ‘harm reduction’ to reduce infections amongst injectors had just been recognized.”

    Today, the Survivre au sida radio show celebrates the progress of medicine and its impact on the lives of families facing HIV. To love and to be loved. To have children and grand-children, knowing that (with a supportive doctor and good insurance) you will see them grow up as you grow old.

    A radio report about Survivre au sida, on celebrating life with HIV while facing racism and poverty

    This report by Michel Arseneault for Radio France International (RFI), first broadcast on 11 December 2006, is the only time an English-language journalist documented this singular story of how families facing HIV, poverty, and disease responded to a radio show’s call for empowerment by speaking for themselves, in their own names, and for their own needs.