Stories

Tag: continuous learning

  • What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    Imagine a social worker in Ukraine supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis. Thousands of kilometers away, a radiation specialist in Japan is trying to find effective ways to communicate with local communities. In Nigeria, a health worker is tackling how to increase immunization coverage in their remote village. These professionals face very different challenges in very different places. Yet when they joined their first “Impact Accelerator”, something remarkable happened. They all found a way forward. They all made real progress. They all discovered they are not alone.

    The Impact Accelerator is a simple, practical method developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation that helps professionals turn intent into action, results, and outcomes. It has worked equally well in every country where it has been tried. It has helped people – whatever their knowledge domain or context – strengthen action and accelerate progress to improve health outcomes. Each time, in each place, whatever the challenge, it has produced the same powerful results.

    The social worker joins other professionals facing similar challenges. The radiation specialist connects with safety experts dealing with comparable concerns. The health worker collaborates with others working to improve immunization. Each group shares a common purpose.

    What makes the Impact Accelerator different?

    Most training programs teach you something and then send you away. You return to your workplace full of ideas but face the same obstacles. You have new knowledge but struggle to apply it. (Some people call this “knowledge transfer” but it is not only about knowledge. Others call this the “applicability problem”.) You feel alone with your challenges.

    The Impact Accelerator works differently. It stays with you as you implement change. It connects you with others facing similar challenges. It helps you take small, concrete steps each week toward your bigger goal.

    Each Impact Accelerator brings together professionals working on the same type of challenge. Social workers who support children join with others who do the same – but the group may also include teachers and psychologists they do not usually work with. Safety specialists connect with safety specialists, but also people in other job roles. It is their shared purpose that makes this diversity productive:  every discussion, every shared experience, every piece of advice directly applies to their work.

    Think of it like learning to ride a bicycle. Traditional training is like someone explaining how bicycles work. The Impact Accelerator is like having someone run alongside you, keeping you steady as you pedal, cheering when you succeed, and helping you get back on when you fall. Everyone learns to ride, together. And everyone is going somewhere.

    How does the Impact Accelerator work?

    The Impact Accelerator follows a simple weekly rhythm that fits into daily work. It is learning-based work and work-based learning.

    Monday: Set your goal

    Every Monday, you decide on one specific action you will complete by Friday. Not a vague hope or a grand plan. One concrete thing you can actually do.

    For example:

    • “I will create a safe space activity for five children showing signs of trauma.”
    • “I will develop a visual guide for the new radiation monitoring procedures.”
    • “I will meet with three community leaders to discuss vaccine concerns.”

    You share this goal with others in the Accelerator. This creates accountability. You know that on Friday, your peers will ask how it turned out.

    Wednesday: Check in with peers

    Midweek, you connect with others in your group who face the same type of challenges. You share what is working, what is difficult, and what you are learning.

    This is where magic happens. Someone else tried something that failed. Now you know to try differently. Another person found a creative solution. Now you can adapt it for your situation. You realize you are part of something bigger than yourself.

    Friday: Report and reflect

    On Friday, you report on your progress. Did you achieve your goal? What happened when you tried? What did you learn?

    This is not about judging success or failure. Sometimes the most valuable learning comes from things that did not work as expected. The important thing is that you took action, you reflected on what happened, and you are ready to try again next week.

    Monday again: Build on what you learned

    The next Monday, you set a new goal. But now you are not starting from zero. You have the experience from last week. You have ideas from your peers. You have momentum.

    Week by week, action by action, you make progress toward your larger goal.

    The power of structured support in the Impact Accelerator

    The Impact Accelerator provides several types of support to help you succeed.

    Peer learning networks

    You join a community of professionals who understand your challenges because they face similar ones. 

    Each Impact Accelerator brings together people working on the same type of challenge. This shared purpose means that every suggestion, every idea, every lesson learned is likely to be relevant to your work. The learning comes not from distant experts but from people doing the same work you do. Their solutions are practical and tested in real conditions like yours.

    Guided structure

    While you choose your own goals and actions, the Accelerator provides a framework that keeps you moving forward. The weekly rhythm creates momentum. The reporting requirements ensure reflection. The peer connections prevent isolation.

    This structure is like the banks of a river. The water (your energy and creativity) flows freely, but the banks keep it moving in a productive direction.

    Expert guidance when needed

    Sometimes you need specific technical input or help with a particular challenge. The Accelerator provides “guides on the side” – experts who offer targeted support without taking over your process. They help you think through problems and connect you with resources, but you remain in charge of your own change effort.

    What participants achieve

    Across different countries and different challenges, Impact Accelerator participants report similar outcomes.

    Increased confidence

    “Before, I knew what should be done but felt overwhelmed about how to start. Now I take one step at a time and see real progress.” This confidence comes from successfully completing weekly actions and seeing their impact.

    Tangible progress

    Participants do not just learn about change; they create it. A vaccination program reaches new communities. Safety procedures actually get implemented. Children receive support when they need it. The changes may start small, but they are real and they grow.

    Expanded networks

    “I used to feel like I was the only one facing these problems. Now I have colleagues across my country who understand and support me.” These networks last beyond the Accelerator, providing ongoing support and collaboration.

    Enhanced problem-solving

    Through weekly practice and peer exchange, participants develop stronger skills for analyzing challenges and developing solutions. They learn to break big problems into manageable actions and to adapt based on results.

    Resilience in facing obstacles

    Every change effort faces barriers. The Accelerator helps participants expect these obstacles and work through them with peer support rather than giving up when things get difficult.

    How can the same methodology work everywhere?

    The Impact Accelerator has succeeded across vastly different contexts – from supporting children in Ukrainian cities to enhancing radiation safety in Japanese facilities to improving immunization in Nigerian villages. Each Accelerator focuses on one specific challenge area, bringing together professionals who share that common purpose. Why does the same approach work for such different challenges?

    The answer lies in focusing on universal elements of successful change:

    • Breaking big goals into weekly actions;
    • Learning from peers who understand your specific context and challenges;
    • Reflecting on what works and what does not;
    • Building momentum through consistent progress; and
    • Creating accountability through a community united by shared purpose.

    Each group focuses on their specific challenge and context, but the process of creating change remains remarkably similar.

    A typical participant journey in the Impact Accelerator

    Let us follow Yuliia, a social worker in Ukraine helping children affected by the humanitarian crisis.

    Week 1: Getting started

    Yuliia joins the Impact Accelerator after developing her action plan. Her big goal: establish effective psychological support for 50 displaced children in her community center within three months.

    On Monday, she sets her first weekly goal: “During daily activities, I will observe and document how 10 children are affected.”

    By Friday, she has detailed observations. She notices that loud noises sometimes cause reactions in most children, and several withdraw completely during group activities. This gives her concrete starting points.

    Week 2: Building on learning

    Based on her observations, Yuliia sets a new goal: “I will create a quiet corner with calming materials and test it with three children who are withdrawn.”

    During the Wednesday check-in, another social worker shares how she uses art therapy for non-verbal expression with traumatized children. A colleague working in a different city describes success with sensory materials. Yuliia incorporates both ideas into her quiet corner.

    The quiet corner proves successful – two of the three children spend time there and begin to engage with the materials. One child draws for the first time since arriving at the center.

    Week 3: Creative solutions

    Yuliia’s new goal: “I will develop a simple ‘feelings chart’ with visual cues and introduce it during morning circle time.”

    Her peers from Ukraine and all over Europe – all working with children – help refine the idea. A psychologist from another region shares that abstract emotions are hard for traumatized children to identify. She suggests using colors and weather symbols instead of facial expressions. Another colleague recommends making the chart interactive rather than static.

    The feelings chart becomes a breakthrough tool. Children who never spoke about their emotions begin pointing to images. Yuliia’s colleagues can better understand and respond to children’s needs.

    Week 4: Scaling what works

    Energized by success, Yuliia aims higher: “I will train two other staff members to use the quiet corner and feelings chart, and create a simple guide for these tools.”

    By now, Yuliia has concrete evidence that these approaches work. She documents specific examples of children’s progress. Her guide is so practical that the center director wants to share it with other locations.

    The ripple effect

    Yuliia’s tools spread throughout the network of centers supporting displaced children. Through the Accelerator network, colleagues adapt her approaches for different age groups and settings. Soon, hundreds of children across Ukraine benefit from these simple but effective interventions.

    The evidence of impact

    The true test of any approach is whether it creates lasting change. Impact Accelerator participants consistently report:

    • Specific improvements in their work that they can measure and document;
    • Sustained changes that continue after the Accelerator ends;
    • Solutions that others adopt and spread;
    • Professional growth that enhances all their future work; and
    • Networks that provide ongoing support and learning.

    These outcomes appear whether participants work on mental health support in Ukraine, radiation safety in Japan, or immunization in Nigeria. The challenges differ, but the pattern of success remains consistent.

    How we prove the Accelerator makes a difference

    In global health, the biggest challenge is proving that your intervention actually caused the improvements you see. This is called “attribution.” How do we know that better health outcomes happened because of the Impact Accelerator and not for other reasons?

    The Geneva Learning Foundation solves this challenge through a three-step process that connects the dots between learning, action, and results.

    Step 1: Measuring where we start

    Before participants begin taking action, they document their baseline – the current situation they want to improve. For example:

    • A social worker records how many children show severe trauma symptoms.
    • A radiation specialist documents current safety incident rates.
    • A health worker notes the vaccination coverage in their area.

    These starting numbers give us a clear picture of where improvement begins.

    Step 2: Tracking progress and actions

    Every week, participants complete “acceleration reports” that capture two things:

    • The specific actions they took; and
    • Any changes they observe in their measurements.

    This creates a detailed record connecting what participants do to what happens as a result. Week by week, the picture becomes clearer.

    Step 3: Proving the connection

    Here is where the Impact Accelerator becomes special. When participants see improvements, they must answer a crucial question: “How much of this change happened because of what you learned and did through the Accelerator?”

    But they cannot just claim credit. They must prove it to their peers by showing:

    • Exactly which actions led to which results;
    • Why the changes would not have happened without their intervention; and
    • Evidence that their specific approach made the difference.

    This peer review process is powerful. Your colleagues understand your context. They know what is realistic. They can spot when claims are too bold or when someone is being too modest. They ask tough questions that help clarify what really caused the improvements.

    After the first-ever Accelerator in 2019, we compared the implementation progress after six months between those who joined this final stage and a control group that also developed action plans, but did not join.

    Why this method works

    This approach solves several problems that make attribution difficult:

    1. Traditional studies often cannot capture the complexity of real-world change. The Impact Accelerator’s method shows not just that change happened, but how and why it happened.
    2. Self-reporting can be unreliable when people work alone. But when you must convince peers who understand your work, the reports become more accurate and honest.
    3. Numbers alone do not tell the whole story. By combining measurements with detailed descriptions of actions and peer validation, we get a complete picture of how change happens.

    The invitation to act

    Around the world, professionals like you are transforming their work through the Impact Accelerator. They start with the same doubts you might have: “Can I really create change? Will this work in my context? Do I have time for this?”

    Week by week, action by action, they discover the answer is yes. Yes, they can create change. Yes, it works in their context. Yes, they can find time because the Accelerator fits into their real work rather than adding to it.

    The Impact Accelerator does not promise overnight transformation. It offers something better: a proven process for creating real, sustainable change through your own efforts, supported by peers who understand your journey.

    If you work in a field where you seek to make a difference, the Impact Accelerator can help you move from good intentions to meaningful impact. The same process can work for you.

    The question is not whether the Impact Accelerator can help you create change. The question is: What change do you want to create?

    Your journey can begin Monday.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

  • You are not alone: 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

    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 specific moments – a time when they had to act quickly during a flood, or how they kept services running during a drought. These stories of extreme weather events reveal not just what happened, but how people actually solved problems on the ground.”

    The questions cover six key scenarios:

    1. Disease outbreaks during floods
    2. Health impacts of drought
    3. Care delivery during heatwaves
    4. Mental health support before, during, and after
    5. Maintaining healthcare access
    6. Quick action and local solutions to protect health

    Each scenario includes detailed prompts that help health workers recall and share the specifics of their experience: What exactly did they do? Who helped? What obstacles did they face? How did they know their actions made a difference?

    Strengthening local action: From individual experience to collective learning to protect community health

    What makes Teach to Reach Questions unique is not just how they are asked, but what happens next. Every experience of an extreme weather event shared becomes part of a larger learning process that benefits the entire community.

    “We don’t just collect these experiences – we give them back,” says Reda Sadki, President of The Geneva Learning Foundation. “Whether someone shares their own story or not, they gain access to the complete collection of experiences of extreme weather events. This creates a virtuous cycle of peer learning, where solutions discovered in one community can help another on the other side of the world.”

    The process unfolds in four phases:

    1. Experience Collection: Health workers share their stories through structured questions ahead of the live Teach to Reach event
    2. Live Event: During the Teach to Reach live event, Contributors who shared their experience are invited to do so in plenary sessions. Everyone can listen in – and join one-to-one networking sessions to learn from the experiences of colleagues from all over the world.
    3. Analysis and Synthesis: After the live event, the Foundation’s Insights team works with the Teach to Reach community to identify patterns, innovations, and key lessons
    4. Knowledge Sharing: Insights are returned to the community through comprehensive collections of experiences, thematic insights reports, and Insights Live sessions

    Building momentum for Teach to Reach 11

    These questions are part of the lead-up to Teach to Reach 11, scheduled for December 5-6, 2024. The experiences shared will inform discussions among the 23,000+ registered participants from over 70 countries.

    “But the learning starts now,” emphasizes Mbuh. “Health workers who request their invitation today can immediately begin sharing and learning from peers. The earlier they join, the more they can benefit from this collective knowledge exchange.”

    Why protecting community health against extreme weather events matters

    As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, the expertise of health workers who have already faced these challenges becomes increasingly valuable.

    “These aren’t just stories – they’re a vital source of knowledge for protecting community health in a changing climate,” says Sadki. “By sharing them widely, we help ensure that health workers everywhere are better prepared when extreme weather strikes their communities.”

    Health professionals interested in participating can request their invitation.

    Listen to the Teach to Reach podcast:

    Is your organisation interested in learning from health workers? Learn more about becoming a Teach to Reach partner.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Why answer Teach to Reach Questions?

    Why answer Teach to Reach Questions?

    Have you ever wished you could talk to another health worker who has faced the same challenges as you? Someone who found a way to keep helping people, even when things seemed impossible? That’s exactly the kind of active learning that Teach to Reach Questions make possible. They make peer learning easy for everyone who works for health.

    What are Teach to Reach Questions?

    Once you join Teach to Reach (what is it?), you’ll receive questions about real-world challenges that matter to health professionals.

    How does it work?

    1. You choose what to share: Answer only questions where you have actual experience. No need to respond to everything – focus on what matters to you.
    2. Share specific moments: Instead of general information, we ask about real situations you’ve faced. What exactly happened? What did you do? How did you know it worked?
    3. Learn from others: Within weeks, you’ll receive a collection of experiences shared by health workers from over 70 countries. See how others solved problems similar to yours.

    What’s different about these questions?

    Unlike typical surveys that just collect data, Teach to Reach Questions are active learning that:

    • Focus on your real-world experience.
    • Help you reflect on what worked (and what didn’t).
    • Connect you to solutions from other health workers.
    • Give back everything shared to help everyone learn.

    See what we give back to the community. Get the English-language collection of Experiences shared from Teach to Reach 10. The new compendium includes over 600 health worker experiences about immunisation, climate change, malaria, NTDs, and digital health. A second collection of more than 600 experiences shared by French-speaking participants is also available.

    What’s in it for you?

    Peer learning happens when we learn from each other. Your answers can help others – and their answers can help you.

    1. Get recognized: You’ll be honored as a Teach to Reach Contributor and receive certification.
    2. Learn practical solutions: See how other health workers tackle challenges like yours.
    3. Make connections: At Teach to Reach, you’ll meet others who have been sharing and learning about the same issues.
    4. Access support: Global partners will share how they can support solutions you and other health workers develop.

    A health worker’s experience

    Here is what on community health worker from Kenya said:

    “When flooding hit our area, I felt so alone trying to figure out how to keep helping people. Through Teach to Reach, I learned that a colleague in another country had faced the same problem. Their solution helped me prepare better for the next flood. Now I’m sharing my experience to help others.”

    Think about how peer learning could help you when more than 23,000 health professionals are asked to share their experience on a challenge that matters to you.

    Ready to start?

    1. Request your invitation to Teach to Reach now.
    2. Look for questions in your inbox.
    3. Share your experience on topics you know about.
    4. Receive the complete collection of shared experiences.
    5. Join us in December to meet others face-to-face.

    Remember: Your experience, no matter how small it might seem to you, could be exactly what another health worker needs to hear.

    The sooner you join, the more you’ll learn from colleagues worldwide.

    Together, we can turn what each of us knows into knowledge that helps everyone.

    Listen to the Teach to Reach podcast:

    Is your organisation interested in learning from health workers? Learn more about becoming a Teach to Reach partner.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • What is the pedagogy of Teach to Reach?

    What is the pedagogy of Teach to Reach?

    In a rural health center in Kenya, a community health worker develops an innovative approach to reaching families who have been hesitant about vaccination.

    Meanwhile, in a Brazilian city, a nurse has gotten everyone involved – including families and communities – onboard to integrate information about HPV vaccination into cervical cancer screening.

    These valuable insights might once have remained isolated, their potential impact limited to their immediate contexts.

    But through Teach to Reach – a peer learning platform, network, and community hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation – these experiences become part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that transforms how health workers learn and adapt their practices worldwide.

    Since January 2021, the event series has grown to connect over 21,000 health professionals from more than 70 countries, reaching its tenth edition with 21,398 participants in June 2024.

    Scale matters, but this level of engagement begs the question: how and why does it work?

    The challenge in global health is not just about what people need to learn – it is about reimagining how learning happens and gets applied in complex, rapidly-changing environments to improve performance, improve health outcomes, and prepare the next generation of leaders.

    Traditional approaches to professional development, built around expert-led training and top-down knowledge transfer, often fail to create lasting change.

    They tend to ignore the rich knowledge that exists in practice – what we know when we are there every day, side-by-side with the community we serve – and the complex ways that learning actually occurs in professional networks and communities.

    Teach to Reach is one component in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s emergent model for learning and change.

    This article describes the pedagogical patterns that Teach to Reach brings to life.

    A new vision for digital-first, networked professional learning

    Teach to Reach represents a shift in how we think about professional learning in global health.

    Its pedagogical pattern draws from three complementary theoretical frameworks that together create a more complete understanding of how professionals learn and how that learning translates into improved practice.

    At its foundation lies Bill Cope’s and Mary Kalantzis’s New Learning framework, which recognizes that knowledge creation in the digital age requires new approaches to learning and assessment.

    Teach to Reach then integrates insights from Watkins and Marsick’s research on the strong relationship between learning culture (a measure of the capacity for change) and performance and George Siemens’s learning theory of connectivism to create something syncretic: a learning approach that simultaneously builds individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength.

    Active knowledge making

    The prevailing model of professional development often treats learners as empty vessels to be filled with expert knowledge.

    Drawing from constructivist learning theory, it positions health workers as knowledge creators rather than passive recipients.

    When a community health worker in Kenya shares how they’ve adapted vaccination strategies for remote communities, they are not just describing their work – they’re creating valuable knowledge that others can learn from and adapt.

    The role of experts is even more significant in this model: experts become “Guides on the side”, listening to challenges and their contexts to identify what expert knowledge is most likely to be useful to a specific challenge and context.

    (This is the oft-neglected “downstream” to the “upstream” work that goes into the creation of global guidelines.)

    This principle manifests in how questions are framed.

    Instead of asking “What should you do when faced with vaccine hesitancy?” Teach to Reach asks “Tell us about a time when you successfully addressed vaccine hesitancy in your community.” This subtle shift transforms the learning dynamic from theoretical to practical, from passive to active.

    Collaborative intelligence

    The concept of collaborative intelligence, inspired by social learning theory, recognizes that knowledge in complex fields like global health is distributed across many individuals and contexts.

    No single expert or institution holds all the answers.

    By creating structures for health workers to share and learn from each other’s experiences, Teach to Reach taps into what cognitive scientists call “distributed cognition” – the idea that knowledge and understanding emerge from networks of people rather than individual minds.

    This plays out practically in how experiences are shared and synthesized.

    When a nurse in Brazil shares their approach to integrating COVID-19 vaccination with routine immunization, their experience becomes part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that includes perspectives from diverse contexts and roles.

    Metacognitive reflection

    Metacognition – thinking about thinking – is crucial for professional development, yet it is often overlooked in traditional training.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds in opportunities for metacognitive reflection through its question design and response framework.

    When participants share experiences, they are prompted not just to describe what happened, but to analyze why they made certain decisions and what they learned from the experience.
    This reflective practice helps health workers develop deeper understanding of their own practice and decision-making processes.

    It transforms individual experiences into learning opportunities that benefit both the sharer and the wider community.

    Recursive feedback

    Learning is not linear – it is a cyclical process of sharing, reflecting, applying, and refining.

    Teach to Reach’s model of recursive feedback, inspired by systems thinking, creates multiple opportunities for participants to engage with and build upon each other’s experiences.

    This goes beyond communities of practice, because the community component is part of a broader, dynamic and ongoing process.

    Executing a complex pedagogical pattern

    The pedagogical pattern of Teach to Reach come to life through a carefully designed implementation framework over a six-month period, before, during, and after the live event.

    This extended timeframe is not arbitrary – it is based on research showing that sustained engagement over time leads to deeper learning and more lasting change than one-off learning events.
    The core of the learning process is the Teach to Reach Questions – weekly prompts that guide participants through progressively more complex reflection and sharing.

    These questions are crafted to elicit not just information, but insight and understanding.

    They follow a deliberate sequence that moves from description to analysis to reflection to application, mirroring the natural cycle of experiential learning.

    Communication as pedagogy

    In Teach to Reach, communication is not just about delivering information – it is an integral part of the learning process.

    The model uses what scholars call “pedagogical communication” – communication designed specifically to facilitate learning.

    This manifests in several ways:

    • Personal and warm tone that creates psychological safety for sharing
    • Clear calls to action that guide participants through the learning process
    • Multiple touchpoints that reinforce learning and maintain engagement
    • Progressive engagement that builds complexity gradually

    Learning culture and performance

    Watkins and Marsick’s work helps us understand why Teach to Reach’s approach is so effective.

    Learning culture – the set of organizational values, practices, and systems that support continuous learning – is crucial for translating individual insights into improved organizational performance.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds elements of strong learning cultures into its design.

    Furthermore, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s research found that continuous learning is the weakest dimension of learning culture in immunization – and probably global health.

    Hence, Teach to Reach itself provides a mechanism to strengthen specifically this dimension.

    Take the simple act of asking questions about real work experiences.

    This is not just about gathering information – it’s about creating what Watkins and Marsick call “inquiry and dialogue,” a fundamental dimension of learning organizations.

    When health workers share their experiences, they are not just describing what happened.

    They are engaging in a form of collaborative inquiry that helps everyone involved develop deeper understanding.

    Networks of knowledge

    George Siemens’s connectivism theory provides another crucial lens for understanding Teach to Reach’s effectiveness.

    In today’s world, knowledge is not just what is in our heads – it is distributed across networks of people and resources.

    Teach to Reach creates and strengthens these networks through its unique approach to asynchronous peer learning.

    The process begins with carefully designed questions that prompt health workers to share specific experiences.

    But it does not stop there.

    These experiences become nodes in a growing network of knowledge, connected through themes, challenges, and solutions.

    When a health worker in India reads about how a colleague in Nigeria addressed a particular challenge, they are not just learning about one solution – they are becoming part of a network that makes everyone’s practice stronger.

    From theory to practice

    What makes Teach to Reach particularly powerful is how it fuses multiple theories of learning into a practical model that works in real-world conditions.

    The model recognizes that learning must be accessible to health workers dealing with limited connectivity, heavy workloads, and diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

    New Learning’s emphasis on multimodal meaning-making supports the use of multiple communication channels ensuring accessibility.

    Learning culture principles guide the creation of supportive structures that make continuous learning possible even in challenging conditions.

    Connectivist insights inform how knowledge is shared and distributed across the network.

    Creating sustainable change

    The real test of any learning approach is whether it creates sustainable change in practice.

    By simultaneously building individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength, it creates the conditions for continuous improvement and adaptation.

    Health workers do not just learn new approaches – they develop the capacity to learn continuously from their own experience and the experiences of others.

    Organizations do not just gain new knowledge – they develop stronger learning cultures that support ongoing innovation.

    And the broader health system gains not just a collection of good practices, but a living network of practitioners who continue to learn and adapt together.

    Looking forward

    As global health challenges have become more complex, the need for more effective approaches to professional learning becomes more urgent.

    Teach to Reach’s pedagogical model, grounded in complementary theoretical frameworks and proven in practice, offers valuable insights for anyone interested in creating impactful professional learning experiences.

    The model suggests that effective professional learning in complex fields like global health requires more than just good content or engaging delivery.

    It requires careful attention to how learning cultures are built, how networks are strengthened, and how individual learning connects to organizational and system performance.

    Most importantly, it reminds us that the most powerful learning often happens not through traditional training but through thoughtfully structured opportunities for professionals to learn from and with each other.

    In this way, Teach to Reach is a demonstration of what becomes possible when we reimagine how professional learning happens in service of better health outcomes worldwide.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Why participate in Teach to Reach?

    Why participate in Teach to Reach?

    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 is not just its size, but its composition.

    Unlike traditional conferences dominated by high-level experts, 80% of Teach to Reach participants work at district and facility levels, bringing ground-level insights to global discussions.

    Half are government workers.

    One in five work for health in the context of armed conflict.

    Why do so many health workers join and contribute to Teach to Reach?

    The event’s success lies in its unique process.

    Weeks before the main event, participants start sharing their experiences through targeted questions.

    In June, these “Teach to Reach Questions” resulted in over 2,000 real-world stories and insights being collected and shared back with the community.

    This pre-event engagement ensures that when participants finally meet virtually, conversations are rich, relevant, and rooted in real-world challenges.

    During the two-day event, participants engage in a mix of plenary sessions, interactive workshops, and one-on-one networking.

    “It’s like speed dating for global health professionals,” jokes The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Charlotte Mbuh. “But instead of romantic connections, we’re forming professional bonds that can transform health outcomes in our communities.”

    This structure facilitates direct dialogue between global health leaders and frontline workers.

    How does this relate to the work done by global partners?

    Ahead of Teach to Reach 10, Dr. Kate O’Brien, Director of Immunization at WHO, noted, “Our job is to take everything that you all know at the grassroots level and bring it together into sort of that collated guidance.”

    Jaded global health staff may ask “So what?”.

    The impact of Teach to Reach extends far beyond the event itself.

    Health workers leading Teach to Reach helped create the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030).

    This year, over 2,400 civil society and community-based organizations and at least as many local leaders engaged as as partners, creating a diverse network that spans from grassroots NGOs and local government agencies to global institutions like Gavi and UNICEF.

    Connections made through the network outlast the event itself, strengthening local action and creating new ways to inform global strategies.

    For global partners, Teach to Reach offers an unparalleled opportunity.

    Dr. Ephraim T. Lemango, Chief of Immunization at UNICEF, said: “We’ve said we want to listen and that co-creation is very important… This is exactly the type of innovative approach that we need to overcome the complex challenges we are faced with in global health.”

    Teach to Reach 10 demonstrated the event’s growing impact and reach:

    • Diverse participation: 80% of attendees were district and facility-level health workers, providing ground-level perspectives often missing from global health dialogues.
    • Organizational engagement: 2,400 organizations participated in the partnership process, with 240 selected as official partners, spanning local NGOs to global institutions.
    • Thematic relevance: The event addressed critical issues like climate change’s impact on health, with insights from 4,700 health workers informing discussions.
    • Global-local collaboration: Sessions featured partnerships between international organizations and local implementers, such as UNICEF’s work on reaching zero-dose children in urban settings.
    • Tangible outcomes: Post-event surveys revealed that 99.7% of respondents reported increased motivation, and 97.4% learned something new and applicable to their work.

    We are pleased to announce Teach to Reach 11 that will be held on 5-6 December 2024.

    As Teach to Reach 11 approaches, the excitement is palpable.

    This year’s event promises to continue to explore critical issues like climate change’s impact on health, malaria, and immunization, bringing new partners seeking to listen and learn with communities.

    The running thread across all these issues is expressed in a groundbreaking Manifesto for investment in health workers, developed collaboratively by over 1,300 Teach to Reach participants.

    For those new to Teach to Reach, participating is straightforward.

    The event is free for health professionals from low and middle-income countries, with options for low-bandwidth participation to ensure inclusivity.

    Global organizations can join as partners, gaining access to a wealth of insights and opportunities through their respectful, meaningful engagement with health workers.

    By harnessing the collective wisdom of health professionals worldwide, Teach to Reach is creating a new paradigm for learning, collaboration, and action in global health.

    So, whether you’re a community health worker in rural Asia or a decision-maker at a global health institution, Teach to Reach invites you to be part of this transformative journey.

    Together, we can bridge the gap between global strategies and local realities, turning shared knowledge into powerful action for better health worldwide.

  • Experience-sharing sessions in the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030: A novel approach to localize global health collaboration

    Experience-sharing sessions in the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030: A novel approach to localize global health collaboration

    As immunization programs worldwide struggle to recover from pandemic disruptions, the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) offers a novel, practitioner-led approach to accelerate progress towards global vaccination goals.

    From March to June 2022, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) conducted the first Full Learning Cycle (FLC) of the Movement for IA2030, engaging 6,185 health professionals from low- and middle-income countries.

    A cornerstone of this programme was a series of 44 experience-sharing sessions held between 7 March and 13 June 2022. These sessions brought together between 20 and 400 practitioners per session to discuss and solve real-world immunization challenges.

    IA2030 case study 16, by Charlotte Mbuh and François Gasse, offers valuable insights from these experience-sharing session:

    1. what we learned from the experiences themselves and how it can help practitioners; and
    2. what we learned about the significance and potential of the peer learning process itself.

    Download the full case study: IA2030 Case study 16. Continuum from knowledge to performance. The Geneva Learning Foundation.

    For every challenge shared during the experience sharing sessions, there was always at least one member who had encountered or was encountering the same challenge and had carried out measures to resolve it.

    These sessions provided a space to share practical stories that are making a difference – and supported participants in considering their relevance to their own situations.

    Experience sharing also helped build confidence and motivation.

    Members were able to identify with experiences shared, realizing they were not alone in facing similar challenges.

    The sessions covered a wide range of critical immunization topics.

    For instance, a participant from Nigeria discussed strategies for reaching zero-dose children in Borno state.

    Facing the challenge of reaching approximately 600,000 unvaccinated children, the presenter received practical suggestions from peers, including developing a zero-dose reduction operational plan, leveraging new vaccine introductions, and partnering with the private sector for evening vaccination services.

    In another session, a subnational Ministry of Health staff member from Côte d’Ivoire presented challenges related to cross-border immunization campaigns.

    Peers shared experiences of organizing cross-border meetings to identify unvaccinated children, synchronize efforts, and involve community representatives in the process.

    Such context-specific, experience-based advice exemplifies the unique value of peer learning in addressing complex health system challenges.

    The case study of 44 sessions highlights how these sessions fostered multiple types of learning simultaneously.

    Participants reported learning from each other’s experiences, experiencing the power of solving problems together across distances, feeling a growing sense of belonging to a community, and connecting across country borders and health system levels.

    A district-level Ministry of Health staff member from Ghana encapsulated the impact: “I have linked up with expert vaccinators worldwide through experience sharing and twinning. I have become more competent and knowledgeable in the area of immunization, and work confidently.”

    This sentiment was echoed by many participants who found value not only in acquiring new knowledge but also in expanding their professional networks and gaining confidence in their problem-solving abilities.

    The case study also reveals the adaptability of the approach in responding to unique contexts.

    This resilience underscores the potential of digital platforms to democratize access to expertise and foster global collaboration.

    However, the study also identifies areas for improvement.

    • Participants expressed a desire for more follow-up support and opportunities to continue their peer learning groups beyond the initial sessions.
    • Additionally, the need for better integration of community engagement strategies was identified as a key area for future development.

    To contextualize these findings, we can turn to a 2022 study by Watkins et al., which evaluated a prototype of these experience-sharing sessions known as Immunization Training Challenge Hackathons (ITCH), conducted in 2020.

    The ITCH methodology, developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), informed the design of the 2022 IA2030 Movement sessions.

    Watkins et al. found that the ITCH approach fostered four simultaneous types of learning: peer, remote, social, and networked.

    1. Peer Learning: This involves participants learning directly from each other’s experiences and knowledge. In the context of immunization, imagine a scenario where a vaccination program manager from rural India shares their successful strategy for improving vaccine cold chain management with a colleague facing similar challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. This direct exchange of practical, context-specific knowledge can complement more theoretical training, as it is based on real-world application.
    2. Remote Learning: This refers to the ability to learn and solve problems collaboratively across geographical distances. For an immunization specialist, this might seem counterintuitive, as many believe that hands-on, in-person training is essential. However, the ITCH sessions demonstrated that meaningful learning can occur remotely. For example, a team in Bangladesh could describe their approach to overcoming vaccine hesitancy, and a team in Nigeria could immediately adapt and apply those strategies to their local context, all without the need for costly and time-consuming travel.
    3. Social Learning: This concept emphasizes the importance of learning within a network. In the immunization field, professionals often work in isolation, especially at sub-national levels. The ITCH sessions created a sense of belonging to a global network, community, and platform of immunization practitioners. This social aspect can boost motivation, reduce feelings of isolation, and foster a collective approach to problem-solving that transcends individual or even national boundaries.
    4. Networked Learning: This type of learning emerges from connections made across different levels of health systems and across country borders. For an epidemiologist, this might be analogous to how disease surveillance networks function across borders. In the ITCH context, it means that a district-level immunization officer could learn from and share ideas with national-level policymakers from other countries, fostering a more holistic understanding of immunization challenges and solutions.

    These four types of learning operate simultaneously during ITCH sessions, creating a synergistic effect. 

    For instance, a participant might learn a new cold chain management technique (peer learning) from a colleague in another country (remote learning), feel supported by the global community in implementing this new technique (social learning), and then share their adaptation of this technique with others across various levels of the health system (networked learning).

    From an epidemiological perspective, this approach to learning could be compared to how we understand disease transmission and intervention effectiveness.

    Just as multiple factors contribute to disease spread and control, these multiple learning types contribute to knowledge dissemination and capacity building in the immunization field.

    The value of this approach lies in its potential to rapidly disseminate practical, context-specific knowledge and solutions across a global network of immunization professionals.

    This can lead to faster adoption of best practices, more innovative problem-solving, and ultimately, improvements in immunization program performance that could contribute to better disease control outcomes.

    While this approach may seem unconventional compared to traditional training methods in the immunization field, the evidence presented by Watkins et al. suggests that it can be a powerful complement to existing capacity-building efforts, particularly in resource-constrained settings where access to formal training opportunities may be limited.

    This multifaceted approach allowed participants to not only acquire new knowledge but also to expand their professional networks and gain confidence in their problem-solving abilities—findings that align closely with the outcomes observed in the 2022 IA2030 Movement sessions.

    The Watkins study emphasized the importance of building confidence and motivation through peer learning experiences, a theme strongly echoed in the Mbuh case study.

    Furthermore, Watkins et al. highlighted the potential of this approach to create a “space of possibility” for innovation and problem-solving, which is evident in the diverse and creative solutions shared during the 2022 sessions.

    Both studies underscore the significance of peer-led, digital learning experiences in accelerating progress towards global health goals.

    By fostering peer learning and digital collaboration, these approaches empower health workers to turn global strategies into effective local action.

    References

    Mbuh, C., Gasse, F., Jones, I., Sadki, R., Brooks, A., Zha, M., Steed, I., Sequeira, J., Churchill, S., Kovanovic, V., 2022. IA2030 Case study 16. Continuum from knowledge to performance. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7014392

    Watkins, K.E., Sandmann, L.R., Dailey, C.A., Li, B., Yang, S.-E., Galen, R.S., Sadki, R., 2022. Accelerating problem-solving capacities of sub-national public health professionals: an evaluation of a digital immunization training intervention. BMC Health Serv Res 22, 736. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08138-4

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Integrating community-based monitoring (CBM) into a comprehensive learning-to-action model

    Integrating community-based monitoring (CBM) into a comprehensive learning-to-action model

    According to Gavi, “community-based monitoring” or “CBM” is a process where service users collect data on various aspects of health service provision to monitor program implementation, identify gaps, and collaboratively develop solutions with providers.

    • Community-based monitoring (CBM) has emerged as a promising strategy for enhancing immunization program performance and equity.
    • CBM interventions have been implemented across different settings and populations, including remote rural areas, urban poor, fragile/conflict-affected regions, and marginalized groups such as indigenous populations and people living with HIV.

    By engaging service users, CBM aims to foster greater accountability and responsiveness to local needs.

    • However, realizing CBM’s potential in practice has proven challenging.
    • Without a coherent approach, CBM risks becoming just another disconnected tool.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation’s innovative learning-to-action model offers a compelling framework within which CBM could be applied to immunization challenges.

    The model’s comprehensive design creates an enabling environment for effectively integrating diverse monitoring data sources – and this could include community perspectives.

    Health workers as trusted community advisers… and members of the community

    A distinctive feature of TGLF’s model is its emphasis on health workers’ role as trusted advisors to the communities they serve.

    The model recognizes that local health staff are not merely service providers, but often deeply embedded community members with intimate knowledge of local realities.

    For example, in TGLF’s immunization learning initiatives, participating health workers frequently share insights into the social, cultural, and economic factors shaping vaccine hesitancy and uptake in their communities.

    • They discuss the everyday barriers families face, from misinformation to transportation challenges, and strategize context-specific outreach approaches.
    • This grounding in community realities positions health workers as vital bridges for facilitating community engagement in monitoring.

    When local staff are empowered as active agents of learning and change, they can more effectively champion community participation, translating insights into tangible improvements.

    Could CBM fit into a more comprehensive system from local monitoring to action?

    TGLF’s model supports health workers in this bridging role by providing a comprehensive framework for local monitoring and action.

    Through peer learning networks and problem-solving cycles, the model equips health staff to collect, interpret, and act on unconventional monitoring data from their communities.

    For instance, in TGLF’s 2022 “Full Learning Cycle” initiative, 6,185 local health workers from 99 countries examined key immunization indicators to inform their analyses of root causes and then map out corrective actions.

    • Participants began monitoring their own local health indicators, such as vaccination coverage rates.
    • For many, this was the first time they had been prompted to use this data for problem-solving a real-world challenge they face, rather than just reporting up the next level of the health system.

    They discussed many factors critical for tailoring immunization strategies.

    This transition – from being passive data collectors to active data users – has proven transformative.

    It positions health workers not as cogs in a reporting machine, but as empowered analysts and strategists.

    By discussing real metrics with peers, participants make data actionable and contextually meaningful.

    Guided by expert-designed rubrics and facilitated discussions, health workers translated this localized monitoring data into practical improvement plans.

    For an epidemiologist, this represents a significant shift from traditional top-down monitoring paradigms.

    By valuing and actioning local knowledge, TGLF’s model demonstrates how community insights can be systematically integrated into immunization decision-making.

    However, until now, its actors have been health workers, many of them members of the communities they serve, not service users themselves.

    CBM’s focus on monitoring is important – but leaves out key issues around community participation, decision-making autonomy, and strategy.

    How could we integrate CBM into a transformative approach?

    TGLF’s experiences suggest that CBM could be embedded within comprehensive learning-to-action systems focused on locally-led change.

    TGLF’s model is more than a monitoring intervention.

    • It combines structured learning, rapid solution sharing, root cause analysis, action planning, and peer accountability to drive measurable improvements.
    • These mutually reinforcing components create an enabling environment for health workers to translate insights into impact.

    In this framing, community monitoring becomes one critical input within a continuous, collaborative process of problem-solving and adaptation.

    Several features of TGLF’s model illustrate how this integration could work in practice:

    1. Peer accountability structures, where health workers regularly convene to review progress, share challenges, and iterate solutions, create natural entry points for discussing and actioning community feedback.
    2. Rapid dissemination channels, like TGLF’s “Ideas Engine” for spreading promising practices across contexts, enable local innovations in response to community-identified gaps to be efficiently scaled.
    3. Emphasis on root cause analysis and systemic thinking equips health workers to interpret community insights within a broader ecosystem lens, connecting localized issues to upstream determinants.
    4. Cultivation of connected leadership empowers local actors to champion community priorities and navigate complex change processes.

    TGLF’s extensive digital network connects health workers across system levels and contexts, enabling them to learn from each other’s experiences with no upper limit to the number of participants.

    By contrast, CBM seems to assume that a community is limited to a physical area, which fails to recognize that problem-solving complex challenges requires expanding the range of inputs used.

    Within a networked approach that connects both community members and health workers across boundaries of geography, health system level, and roles, CBM could become an integral component of a transformative approach to health system improvement – one that recognizes communities and local health workers as capable architects of context-responsive solutions.

    Fundamentally, the TGLF model invites a shift in mindset about whose expertise counts in monitoring and driving system change.

    CBM could provide the ‘connective tissue’ for health workers to revise how they listen and learn with the communities they serve.

    For immunization programs grappling with persistent inequities, this shift from passive compliance to proactive local problem-solving is critical.

    As the COVID-19 crisis has underscored, rapidly evolving public health challenges demand localized action that harnesses the full range of community expertise.

    TGLF’s model offers a tested framework for actualizing this vision at scale.

    By investing in local health workers’ capacity to learn, adapt, and lead change in partnership with the communities they serve, the model illuminates a promising pathway for integrating CBM into immunization monitoring and beyond.

    For epidemiologists and global health practitioners, TGLF’s approach invites a reframing of how we conceptualize and operationalize community engagement in health system monitoring.

    It challenges us to move beyond tokenistic participation towards genuine co-design and co-ownership of monitoring processes with local actors.

    Realizing this vision will require significant shifts in mindsets, power dynamics, and resource flows.

    But as TGLF’s initiatives demonstrate, when we invest in the leadership of those closest to the challenges we seek to solve, transformative possibilities emerge.

    Further rigorous research comparing the impacts of different CBM integration models could help accelerate this paradigm shift, surfacing critical lessons for the immunization field and global health more broadly.

    TGLF’s model not only offers compelling lessons for reimagining monitoring and improvement in immunization programs, it also provides a pathway for integrating CBM into a system that supports actual change.

    CBM practitioners are likely to struggle with how to incorporate it into existing practices.

    By investing in frontline health workers as change agents, and surrounding them with an empowering learning ecosystem, the model offers a path to then bring in community monitoring.

    Without such leadership from health workers, it is unlikely that communities are able to participate.

    The journey to authentic community engagement in health system monitoring is undoubtedly complex.

    But if we are to deliver on the promise of equitable immunization for all, it is a journey we must undertake.

    TGLF’s model lights one promising path forward – one that positions communities and local health workers as the beating heart of a learning health system.

    While Gavi’s evidence brief affirms the promise of CBM for immunization, TGLF’s experience with its own model suggests the full potential of CBM may be realized by embedding it within more comprehensive, digitally-enabled learning systems that activate health workers as agents of change – and do so with both physical and digital communities implementing new forms of peer and community accountability that complement conventional kinds (supervision, administration, donor, etc.).

  • Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization 

    Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization 

    Continuous learning is lacking in immunization learning culture, a measure of the capacity for change..

    This lack may be an underestimated barrier to the “Big Catch-Up” and reaching zero-dose children

    This was a key finding presented at Gavi’s Zero-Dose Learning Hub (ZDLH) webinar “Equity in Action: Local Strategies for Reaching Zero-Dose Children and Communities” on 24 January 2024.

    The finding is based on analysis large-scale learning culture measurements conducted by the Geneva Learning Foundation in 2020 and 2022, with more than 10,000 immunization staff from all levels of the health system, job categories, and contexts, responding from over 90 countries.

    YearnContinuous learningDialogue & InquiryTeam learningEmbedded SystemsEmpowered PeopleSystem ConnectionStrategic Leadership
    202038303.614.68–4.814.685.104.83
    202261853.764.714.864.934.725.234.93
    TGLF global measurements (2020 and 2022) of learning culture in immunization, using the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ)

    What does this finding about continuous learning actually mean?

    In immunization, the following gaps in continuous learning are likely to be hindering performance.

    1. Relatively few learning opportunities for immunization staff
    2. Limitations on the ability for staff to experiment and take risks 
    3. Low tolerance for failure when trying something new
    4. A focus on completing immunization tasks rather than developing skills and future capacity
    5. Lack of encouragement for on-the-job learning 

    This gap hurts more than ever when adapting strategies to reach “zero-dose” children.

    These are children who have not been reached when immunization staff carry out what they usually do.

    The traditional learning model is one in which knowledge is codified into lengthy guidelines that are then expected to trickle down from the national team to the local levels, with local staff competencies focused on following instructions, not learning, experimenting, or preparing for the future.

    For many immunization staff, this is the reference model that has helped eradicate polio, for example, and to achieve impressive gains that have saved millions of children’s lives.

    It can therefore be difficult to understand why closing persistent equity gaps and getting life-saving vaccines to every child would now require transforming this model.

    Yet, there is growing evidence that peer learning and experience sharing between health workers does help surface creative, context-specific solutions tailored to the barriers faced by under-immunized communities. 

    Such learning can be embedded into work, unlike formal training that requires staff to stop work (reducing performance to zero) in order to learn.

    Yet the predominant culture does little to motivate or empower these workers to recognize or reward such work-based learning.

    Furthermore, without opportunities to develop skills, try new approaches, and learn from both successes and failures, staff may become demotivated and ineffective. 

    This is not an argument to invest in formal training.

    Investment in formal training has failed to measurably translate into improved immunization performance.

    Worse, the per diem economy of extrinsic incentives for formal training has, in some places, led to absurdity: some health workers may earn more by sitting in classrooms than from doing their work.

    With a weak culture of learning, the system likely misses out on practices that make a difference.

    This is the “how” that bridges the gap between best practice and what it takes to apply it in a specific context.

    The same evidence also demonstrates a consistently-strong correlation between strengthened continuous learning and performance.

    Investment in continuous learning is simple, costs surprisingly little given its scalability and effectiveness.

    Calculating the relative effectiveness of expert coaching, peer learning, and cascade training

    How does the scalability of peer learning compare to expert-led coaching ‘fellowships’?

    That means investment in continuous learning is already proven to result in improved performance.

    We call this “learning-based work”.

    References

    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. Excerpt: https://stories.learning.foundation/2023/11/04/how-we-reframed-learning-and-development-learning-based-complex-work/

    The Geneva Learning Foundation. From exchange to action: Summary report of Gavi Zero-Dose Learning Hub inter-country exchanges. Geneva: The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10132961

    The Geneva Learning Foundation. Motivation, Learning Culture and Immunization Programme Performance: Practitioner Perspectives (IA2030 Case Study 7) (1.0); Geneva: The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2022. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7004304

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Reinventing the path from knowledge to action in global health

    Reinventing the path from knowledge to action in global health

    At the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), we have just begun to share a publication like no other. It is titled Overcoming barriers to vaccine acceptance in the community: Key learning from the experiences of 734 frontline health workers.

    You can access the full report here in French and in English. Short summaries are also available in three special issues of The Double Loop, the Foundation’s free Insights newsletter, now available in both English and French. The report, prefaced by Heidi Larson who leads the Vaccine Confidence Project, includes DOI to facilitate citation in academic research. (The Foundation uses a repository established and maintained by the Geneva-based CERN for this purpose.)

    However, knowing that academic papers have (arguably) an average of three readers, we have a different aspiration for dissemination.

    As a global community, we recognize the significance of local action to achieve the global goals.

    The report documents vaccine confidence practices just weeks before the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. It is grounded in the experience of 734 practitioners from local communities, districts, regions, and national teams, who developed case studies documenting a situation in which they were able to successfully lead individuals and groups toward better understanding and acceptance of the benefits of vaccines and vaccination.

    Immunization staff from all levels of the health system became citizen scientists, active knowledge-makers drawing on their personal experience of a situation in which they successfully overcame the barriers to vaccine acceptance in the community.

    Experiential learning offers a unique opportunity to discover unfiltered experiences and insights from thousands of people whose daily lives revolve around delivering immunization services. But what happens once experience has been shared? What is to be done with what we learn?

    Sharing this report, we have found, has triggered remarkable dialogue and led to the co-creation of a steadily growing collection of new practices actually used to build vaccine confidence (as opposed to the many theoretical frameworks on the topic), submitted through our new Insights system. New stories and their analysis are being shared back with local practitioners and with TGLF’s Insights partners, fostering continuous learning that is an action imperative of a strong learning culture. (For Insights, we work with Bridges to Development, the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L), and the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins.)

    In the coming weeks, we will be inviting 10,000 leaders of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 to share this report to their colleagues, teams, and organizations (in both ministries of health and civil society organizations). They will be sharing back their own insights on how the findings can be used to improve demand for vaccines – and colleagues who listen to their presentation of the report will also be able to share back what they learn, connecting with each other through our Insights system.

    Then, the Foundation’s Impact Accelerator will track if and how insights from this report are linked to reported positive outcomes, and we should be able to document this, at least in some cases. This will not only foster double-loop learning but also explicitly link learning to implementation and results.

    In this way, local practitioners will be putting to use global knowledge grounded in their local experiences, for their own needs. We believe that this provides a complementary, more organic mechanism than current top-down processes for developing normative guidance driven by global assumptions and priorities.

    As Kate O’Brien, WHO’s Director of Immunization, said during a recent Insights Live session: “The global role on immunization is actually to bring together everything that is known by people at the grassroots level. That’s where the action is. Global guidance is basically one means to share knowledge and expertise that’s coming from the grassroots level around the world with others who may not have had that experience yet.”

    What we are doing with this report is part of a larger initiative to build the IA2030 Movement Knowledge to Action Hub. New knowledge produced by local practitioners will be available as both static and living documents that local and global practitioners can add their inputs to, at any time. This Hub will be launched at Teach to Reach 7 on 14 October 2022, with over 13,000 local practitioners registered for this event.

    Image: Many paths to moving mountains. The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection.

  • When learning meets emergency: The Geneva Learning Foundation’s approach to crisis response

    When learning meets emergency: The Geneva Learning Foundation’s approach to crisis response

    This article is based on Zapnito CEO Charles Thiede’s interview of Reda Sadki on 16 September 2019.

    “I knew we had hit gold when a young doctor in Ghana was able to turn what he learned into action – and get results that improved the health outcome prospects of every pregnant woman in his district – in just four weeks,” says Reda Sadki, founder of the Geneva Learning Foundation. “His motivation was being part of this global network, this global community, but his focus was on local action.”

    The transformation from classroom learning to immediate implementation in a healthcare setting taught Sadki something profound about how people learn to lead change when facing life-threatening emergencies. For the Geneva Learning Foundation, which he founded just three years ago, this connection between knowledge and action is not accidental. It is the result of a deliberate methodology that challenges conventional assumptions about professional development in crisis response.

    Speaking with Charles Thiede, CEO of Zapnito, in a September 2019 interview, Sadki outlined his organization’s mission: research and development to find better ways to learn, foster new forms of leadership, and lead change in humanitarian development and global health work. The foundation operates at the intersection of urgent need and institutional capacity, working with major international organizations while reaching practitioners directly in communities across 137 countries.

    The reluctant learning systems manager

    Sadki’s path to founding the Geneva Learning Foundation began with twenty years of community organizing, working directly with families facing poverty, disease, and racism in the HIV pandemic. His journey to education as a philosophy for change had its start in the office of an Undersecretary General at the International Red Cross, who asked him if he could “help him bring the Red Cross into the twenty-first century”.

    “In practice, I got stuck with managing a broken learning management system that could not possibly do what I was being asked to do, which was address a network of 17 million volunteers working in 137 countries and figure out how to support their learning needs using digital means,” Sadki recalls.

    The system failure forced fundamental questions about community building, organizational culture, and the relationship between formal learning and practical application. Rather than simply fixing the technology, Sadki began examining why traditional learning approaches consistently failed to produce the leadership capabilities needed for complex humanitarian challenges.

    That broken learning platform became the fastest-growing information system in the global network for two simple but breakthrough insights. Sadki figured out that it was about culture, weaving technology into daily life. And that learning is about producing knowledge, not consuming information.

    This questioning led him to seek out networks of cutting-edge educators from higher education, including George Siemens, one of the founding figures in massive open online courses, or Bill Cope, who was busy building the technological implementation of his “new learning” pedagogy. Sadki’s approach was direct: these educators were transforming higher education, but could their insights apply to people facing life-threatening emergencies?

    “You challenge them by saying, well, you are doing this cutting-edge work with higher education, but in development, humanitarian, and global health work, in terms of learning, education, and training, we have some challenges,” Sadki explains. “They all said yes” to contribute to the foundation’s early work.

    Communities of action, not practice

    The Geneva Learning Foundation’s core innovation emerged from recognizing a persistent disconnect in professional development: the gap between stopping work to learn and applying that learning to solve immediate problems. Traditional training programs, Sadki observed, create what he calls “communities of practice,” which “basically, mostly do not work.”

    Instead, the foundation developed what they term “communities of action”—networks of practitioners united by shared purpose and mission rather than simply shared professional interests. The distinction matters because people facing emergencies cannot afford learning that exists separate from implementation.

    “We produce the kinds of learning outcomes that you get through training, but also go beyond that,” Sadki notes. “We have people come out after a very short time connected to each other, feeling empowered by each other as peers.”

    The foundation’s “Scholar package” represents a systematic approach to creating these communities around virtually any thematic area or operational challenge. The methodology integrates learning with immediate application, enabling practitioners to develop capabilities while simultaneously addressing urgent problems in their specific contexts.

    Measuring what matters

    The foundation’s latest innovation, the Impact Accelerator, launched in July 2019, addresses one of the most persistent problems in organizational learning: demonstrating concrete results rather than participation metrics or satisfaction scores.

    “In learning and development, every Chief Learning Officer has this dilemma,” Sadki explains. “How do you demonstrate impact that you are not just a cost center within the organization?”

    The Impact Accelerator functions as both monitoring system and empowerment network, tracking participants as they move from learning to implementation while providing peer support and accountability mechanisms. The system measures real-world applications—like the Ghanaian doctor’s vaccination information program—rather than quiz scores or completion rates.

    The foundation recently completed piloting this component with results that exceeded expectations from both their team and their partners. One major partner and donor declared they were “doing magic,” recognition that reflects the foundation’s ability to deliver outcomes that larger, better-funded organizations often struggle to achieve.

    The execution imperative

    Sadki’s reflection on organizational effectiveness reveals his pragmatic approach to institutional change: “At the end of the day, you are judged by execution. You can have nice ideas and a lofty mission, but what are you actually able to deliver.”

    This focus on execution shapes the foundation’s work across multiple complex challenges, from immunization programs to gender in humanitarian emergencies. Their current projects include helping organizations ensure that the specific needs of men, women, boys, and girls are addressed in crisis response, ensuring that nobody gets left behind even in the most complicated emergency situations.

    The foundation’s approach addresses critical gaps in global capacity: the world faces challenges requiring people with skill combinations that currently do not exist in sufficient numbers. Their focus on leadership development recognizes that effective responses require capabilities at every level, from community organizing to international coordination.

    Digital transformation as democratic access

    The foundation’s methodology leverages what Sadki calls the “ubiquitous affordability of digital transformation,” creating what he terms a “whole new economy of effort.” This technological access enables direct engagement with communities rather than working exclusively through institutional gatekeepers.

    “As educators, we are addressing people everywhere and anywhere,” Sadki explains. While the foundation works with the world’s largest international organizations—UN agencies, Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, major international NGOs—their educational approach reaches practitioners directly where they work.

    This dual approach reflects Sadki’s understanding that effective change requires both institutional support and grassroots capability. The foundation operates as a bridge between global resources and local implementation, creating networks that connect individual practitioners to larger systems while maintaining focus on immediate, practical problems.

    The privilege of purpose

    When asked about his daily motivation, Sadki frames his work in terms of connection and privilege. “I have spent my entire adult life working on things that I am passionate about, committed to, and that hopefully have not been detrimental to the world,” he says. “I realize not everyone gets to do that.”

    This sense of purpose extends beyond personal satisfaction to encompass the foundation’s role in connecting practitioners across geographical and institutional boundaries. The organization serves as both educator and network facilitator, enabling practitioners to share successes, discuss challenges, and maintain motivation for continued innovation.

    For Sadki, the foundation’s impact is most visible in these individual connections: receiving updates on achievements from practitioners worldwide, connecting at unusual hours due to time zone differences, responding to urgent needs from colleagues facing immediate crises. These relationships embody the foundation’s core insight that learning and leadership development must be embedded in the actual work of responding to complex challenges.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation’s model suggests that professional development in crisis response requires more than knowledge transfer—it demands the creation of networks capable of translating learning into immediate action. In a world where humanitarian emergencies and global health challenges increasingly require rapid adaptation and innovation, the foundation’s approach offers a framework for transforming how organizations develop the leadership capabilities they desperately need.